In Season
by Reichenbach
Summary: An unconscious Time Lord, people from another dimension, an alien invasion…another day in the life at Torchwood. But what does this have to do with ‘blessed events’ and the TARDIS locking people INSIDE? Doors Series 11
1. Chapter 1

OK this one is for darkbunnyrabbit, in honor of her trousers icon : )

**Title:** In Season

**Disclaimer**: Standard disclaimers apply. They're like little dolls you can dress up and play

**Beta:** Thankyaverymuch Rosesbud for the beta happiness

**A/N:** This is part of the **Doors series (this is #11—the rest are numbered in my profile)** which was a Doomsday Fixerupper (Fixerupper ID #177805). I know I totally should have stopped, don't know where this came from, but I apologize. Apparently some folks need a recap, so here goes--

**Our Story**: Rose has Violet in Pete's universe, when she's a child, sometimes comes for her and Bad Wolf forces her through the Void, which has opened up just a tiny bit, due to there now being two Time Lords in the universes to hold it open. Violet is mostly raised by the Doctor, but due to some Torchwoodiness, she, the Doctor and their current companion end up in Pete's universe, Violet forces the Doctor and Rose back to the Doctor's universe, ten years pass with the void being completely closed thanks to the Doctor, before she finds a way back through. The Doctor, Violet and Jack go on a happy little adventure with a rather unhappy little ending, and that's where we're at now.

Torchwood/DW crossover with a smattering of alt!verse. Yes it all sounds very lame when I say it that way, hope it doesn't actually suck that bad in real life. The previous stories were a functional doomsday fixerupper, this one's simply for fun, but I do get the hint it's wearing out it's welcome so don't worry—the masturbatory AU/OC festival will be ending soon. And as always—if it ya don't like it, or it's not your thing, click off of it. I won't be heart broken—I have things that aren't my thing too.

Chapter One

Jack looked down at the Doctor, then to Violet, then back to the Doctor, lying on the grill floor of the ship, extremely unconscious. "We could, like, call Owen."

Prodding the Doctor's side with her boot, she shrugged, her thin, angular face scrunching. "Well, I guess. If ya haven't dissected him by now…"

One hand on the console, Jack leaned over the Doctor, maintaining a casual tone to his conversation. Same sh…stuff, different day. "You are obsessed with dissection. I'll have you know, I am the Name Keeper of those two little imps in the Hub conference room, which means if the Doctor and your mother shuffle off the ole mortal coil, I become their guardian, under Gallifreyan law."

Violet snorted. "Yeah, I'd like you to show me where that's written down. Or better yet—a governing body to enforce it."

Snapping his fingers next to the Doctor's ear, Jack sighed when he got no reaction. "Seriously. First we need to get this thing back to the hub then he needs someone to look him over."

There was that whole part where the alien ship they were on was trembling as it rumbled apart in the Earth's atmosphere. Briefly, Violet wondered who had jurisdiction of space debris that crashed around the poles. Well, she supposed she was about to find out.

She and her grandfather had brokered a deal the year before she'd left Earth whereby UNIT had first dibs on all wreckage not specifically within a territory or border. There had been a lot of griping from within the other Earth's Torchwood at that deal, but it saved on the fighting and near-wars caused by scavenging attempts. Her grandfather was the business man in that partnership—she'd just tried to look out for the long-term good of the Universe.

Sighing with the weight of memories that weren't very old, she began setting dials and started priming the space locator. Slamming the lever back and forth, she noted dully that a headache was building up at the base of her skull. Maybe it hadn't been a knock to the head that had put the Doctor out on the grill floor. Of course, there may have been nothing malicious about the headache at all--maybe it was just the weight of the troubles she knew were coming this Torchwood's way if the crash they were about to skate out of became public knowledge.

Trying to explain in a closed session to a bunch of military leaders and professional politicians that you saw only possibilities ending in annihilation if a compromise wasn't reached really didn't fly too well. At first they'd been trying to keep her…alienness on the low-down. After that had come out of the closet, as it were, it became readily apparent that no one was going to take the word of an alien over the manipulations of a businessman. Her grandfather had worked his mojo in those circumstances, and the world became a bit safer for a bit longer. She'd left Earth just before his bid for the presidency—it wasn't pretty, but she understood politics, and she understood how her presence would kill any chance he had of doing any more good on a larger scale.

The day she and Greg left, her grandmother had cried, the angels wept, and two international organisations dealing with off-world activities threw parties. Sometimes…she liked being hated. As long as she was being hated by the right people.

The TARDIS lurched as she dematerialised and the Doctor's head lolled back and forth but he didn't stir. "We're about thirty seconds out of the hub. If you want to call your people, fine. But don't get my mother worked up over something that might be nothing."

Legs spread shoulder's width apart, Jack held onto the edge of the console, trying not to land on top of the Doctor. "Can't, then—she'll be on the same channel as everyone else. And I'm SURE they're all at the office by now." Gritting his teeth, he looked back towards the door leading into the rest of the ship. "What's taking your other half so long?"

Rushing to another set of controls, Violet set the ship to the task of rematerialising. "I'm sure he wanted to change after he got himself all stitched up." It hadn't been a bad cut, but it had been messy. Neither of them fancied explaining things to people now days, so it was just easier for him to slip off to the wardrobe, find something suitable, and be changed and done with it before they got back to Jack's secret clubhouse.

XYZ

A minute later, when they opened the TARDIS door, they were greeted with three rather unhappy looking people. Jack was a bit surprised that one of them was Ianto. One would have thought he'd be in the conference room, running after the two demonically possessed children who were no doubt tearing the place to shreds. Ianto was just anal like that. Of course, Ianto might just be saving himself the mental strain at that point—and Jack was an easier target. Owen and Tosh were a given, though.

"Guys!" Stepping out of the ship, Jack spread his arms, smiling at his team. "Good morning!"

Owen looked about as irritated as could be; his thin lips were pulled back, nose flared like a dragon. "Nice of you to call us and let us know we're being invaded."

Violet bumped Jack out of the way with her hip, holding out a hand. "Hi, Violet Tyler. Sorry for usurping your glorious leader. Just wanted one more romp with 'Uncle Jack' for old time's sake. Hope you don't mind…"

Toshiko looked from the girl's extended hand to Jack. "Uhh huh."

Ianto adjusted his tie, face frozen in a stony impassiveness. "Great. We have a family reunion on our hands."

Growing suddenly very uninterested with Jack's people, Violet ducked back behind the door, shaking her head. "Oh whatever. I am so done with Torchwood's idea of 'fieldtrips,'" she muttered, then headed back toward the control column and crouched next to the Doctor. "No offence or anything, Captain Jack, but your people suck at gratitude." She put a hand on the side of the Doctor's head. "You'd think they'd have enjoyed sleeping in this morning."

XYZ

Closing her eyes, she reached into the Doctor's mind, trying to wake him. Poking and prodding, she tried to avoid memories and repetitive thoughts, and just head straight for his subconscious to nudge him awake.

He must have been really out cold, however. Even the subconscious barriers were down, and she was flooded with images before she could block them out. His last decade also hadn't been without adventure or trouble. Her mind practically exploded in the second it took her to throw up a mental barrier. She tried once more to prod him awake, and was almost invaded by things he was too unconscious to control.

Pulling her hand away, she retreated quickly and opened her eyes. "Ohhkay. That's full of not-good." Leaning back on her heels, she looked up at Jack and Greg, who'd apparently come to join them at some point in her little trek through the Doctor's head. "He's…messed up."

Sighing, the man with the close-cropped hair and the thin, muppetesque lips clomped up the ramp and to the console. He grabbed both of the Doctor's wrists, checking for a pulse, she supposed. "What happened?"

Raising her arms in a hands-off gesture, Violet stood. "There's so much love going on here, I almost can't stand it. I don't know—he was unconscious by the time we got back to the TARDIS. His mind's all…mucked up. His barriers are down, his mind's like walking into an unlocked vault right now—but HE isn't there. Or something. I don't know."

The man did the whole pulling back the eyelids thing and the general once-over. "Getting him off the floor could help. Lets get him out of here and into the infirmary if I'm going to be forced to treat him…"

Why was Greg leaning against the railing, watching her like that? "Right, like you can work anything in the TARDIS medbay. You're not taking him off the ship—I think the TARDIS is the only thing preventing him completely blasting the psychic airwaves, as it were." Lord, that was rude and snooty, and… oh look, stupid human, I'm better than you. But… well, that bloke had it coming. He was…a prick. And probably the one her mother had punched in the face, if she had to venture a guess.

Looking to Jack and Greg, she gestured for them to help. "If we can get him out of here, I can look him over in the medbay. If he's OK, we might just want to move him to the Zero Room and hope for the best."

The other two members of Jack's team were just inside the door, watching the display as casual observers. Obviously they were familiar with the TARDIS, the whole dimensional properties weren't interesting to them in the least. Which was a shame—she kind of enjoyed shocking people.

They both also moved right out of the way when her mother came waddling through, without her having to ask. God, she was… HUGE. The size of a small Latin American country, even. She rolled the sleeves of her brown canvas jacket up past her elbows. "What's he gotten himself into now?"

Violet had to bite both of her lips, holding back a smile. She'd been worried about upsetting her mother, but she should have known that Rose Tyler was better than that. "I don't know. He's rather unconscious." Ok, that was an understatement, but she really didn't have the words for it. Why was Greg still looking at her like that? Didn't he have anything better to do?

Groaning, her mother placed her hands on her back, behind her hips, as if she could reinforce support for her middle section. "Alright. So what did those things do to him?"

Jack looked to his team. "Tosh--"

Violet stopped listening when he started giving orders. She was too busy staring at her other half and soul-mate, trying to figure out why he had a half a grin plastered across his chocolate-coloured face, one eyebrow arched, and something twinkling in his dark brown eyes.

She slid next to him and away from the uncomfortably large gathering of people. Deciding that she liked the dark green jumper he'd found, she inspected the rest of him—all cleaned up, smelling quite fine, and hair slightly damp from bathing. He was trying to seduce her with soap…and it was working. "What?" she whispered, pinching his arm.

He leaned in, chin almost resting on her shoulder. "We've been back here what? Three hours? Can't stay out of trouble for a minute, you."

She shrugged gesturing to her mother and the lump on the floor. "Look who I get my genetic material from. I'm at a severe disadvantage when it comes to playing it safe."

XYZ

Branden tried the whole pitching a fit on the floor thing, and Rom made a mad dash for the door, but Gwen was on to them. Completely and utterly. She spun around, slammed her hand against the metal frame and leaned against it just as the older boy grabbed the handle, attempting to yank the door opened.

The husky lad of eight moaned, his shoulders rising and falling in defeat. "Awwwww." He dragged it out like a cry of torture. "All the stuff's happening out there!"

Sighing, Gwen made her opinion quite clear by sitting on the floor, leaning against the door, jean-clad legs splayed in front of her. "We're going to stay in here where it's safe." She had no idea what sort of bad parenting the Doctor and Rose Tyler engaged in when they were outside of this base, but she wasn't going to allow these adorable (if a bit of a handful) children run roughshod in the Hub and kill themselves, be eaten by the pterodactyl or dash off into whatever danger they'd started the day with.

She wondered if there was a universal form of child protection services when the youngest one, a scrawny blonde cutie of the tender age of four began with some weird sort of sniffly whiny moany thing while kicking the glass window. "Want mum. Want Captain Jack."

Huffing, Gwen blew her raven bangs off of her forehead and looked up at the ceiling for divine intervention. "What about the Doctor?"

Rom shrugged and pulled his brother away from the glass. "Captain Jack's way better. He's got guns, and a dinosaur, and he's a captain. And, like--always stuck with the Doctor. 'Sides, he's like all…woosh." The child made a gesture like a bomb crashing into his temple, then stuck out his tongue and blew. "And like, moof. Splish. And then his brains come pouring out his ears."

Gwen liked kids. She had none of her own—her life at Torchwood was too complicated for that—but she enjoyed her boyfriend's nephews and her other opportunities to spend time with children. But she had to say…Rose Tyler's boys were…unique. "What's that mean, sweetheart?"

The younger boy, Branden, slumped against the glass dramatically, and then kicked off his shoes and socks. "His brain's all wiggly and the TARDIS says he's broken." Wriggling for a few moments, the boy eventually slid out of his shirt, leaving him in nothing but a pair of khaki shorts. "It makes me itchy."

Gwen tried not to be resentful of the team's part time assistant. Rose was extremely helpful during her times with them, but she came and went, and the duration of her employment was always the length of her pregnancy and perhaps a short time after. A lot of projects that often built up due to lack of time to do them got done, and it was helpful to have an extra set of hands in the field, which was possible if she was in the hub coordinating, in addition to her own field contributions when Jack deemed it 'acceptable.' So really—Rose Tyler was pulling her fair share. It was just…Gwen was a tad bitter about the other woman's charmed life. Granted she had seen her daughter a total of once in the last nineteen years, not to mention the things she'd been through with her family before returning to this universe, or the things she went through when she was 'out there,' in the blue police box.

And Rose was genuinely a nice, caring person. Which made Gwen feel even worse for the things that often crept into her head regarding Jack's…friends. But Gwen had seemingly put her personal life on hold for this place… and Rose Tyler only played at Torchwood, when she was putting her own life on hold—the one that consisted of being out there, in the universe—being one of the things Torchwood worked to guard against.

Picking up the boy's shirt, she tried to persuade him to put it back on. "Now…you can't run around naked."

Branden continued to writhe on the floor, seeming to use the texture of the carpet to scratch every inch of his exposed body. "Don't like…clothes any more."

Rom watched his brother, shifting back and forth from one foot to the other, wiping his hands against his jeans. "Mum's worried, and the Doctor's all mixed up."

The boy said it so seriously that she felt even more guilty for her resentment. Both children had a destiny that had been chosen for them by merit of their heritage. Jack doted upon them and pretended like they were normal children—but their games and instruction seemed to consist of things well beyond the children's years, not to mention the difficult lessons the universe had to teach.

Pulling the younger boy to her, she held up the shirt. "If you put your clothes back on, we can go see everyone."

His pale skin seemed to be breaking out in hives. Perhaps a physical reaction to whatever the boys were sensing? The other one was scratching his palms nervously, and looked as though he were about to break out in a cold sweat.

Getting Branden redressed, she made sure she had both of their hands firmly before escorting them out of the partially wrecked conference room. Two unsupervised kids could do a lot of damage very quickly—especially these two. She almost felt bad for the Doctor, having to deal with them on his own during Rose's pregnancies. Almost.

The younger boy began twisting in her grasp once they got to the bottom of the steps. She had to practically drag him across the hub. "Walk nicely," she tried to encourage, doing her best to keep her voice even. He was four—he didn't understand that he was tearing her arm out of the socket.

Rom's curly brown hair flopped back and forth as the boy shook his head. "I'm itchy too. I don't wanna go. But I wanna go." The boy made a face, his round, full cheeks bunching up near his eyes, hiding them. "Oh it's yucky. It makes my feet itch."

Gwen stopped, inspecting the uncomfortable, fidgeting children, not sure what to do. "What's making your feet itchy?" Did she go on, or did she take them back to the conference room? How had she gotten stuck on child-duty?

Rom looked to his brother. "I dunno. It's all… yucky. His brain's like… everywhere. Ugh." The boy squirmed. "The TARDIS is tryin' ta hold it all inside. But it's all…wohh… and like… and…stuff."

Making the only decision that seemed to make any sense, Gwen pressed onward with the unhappy boys. "Alright. To the police box it is. But if someone says you have to go back to the conference room, then I hope you'll go without a fuss."

The boy looked up at her with such solemn round eyes, she was fairly sure that sending them away would not help out with whatever was happening.

TBC…


	2. Chapter 2

Standard disclaimers and thanks to Rosesbud for betaing and not mocking my regional challengement. I come from a place where "Arn" is beer. So, y'know, I have some issues.

XYZ

Chapter Two

XYZ

It was slightly (ok, more than slightly) wrong of him, but Jack just hung near the door of the medbay with Greg, watching the festivities. It was just… entertaining.

Ok, the whole part where the Doctor was doing some kind of weird psychic spew thing and was completely unconscious—but not in a coma, as Owen had determined—that wasn't so fun. But the part where Owen and Violet were in completely and utter hate for each other was terribly amusing.

Greg's hair had grown long and shaggy, matching his stubbled face and giving him that whole 'I don't give a damn about how I look' sexiness. Vi'd just better watch it, Jack thought—she made one wrong move, and he'd go after the slightly geeky and completely oblivious young man of Indian decent.

Jack's partner in wallflowering scratched his cheek, leaning in for a whisper. "Five quid on her saying 'stupid human' in the next five minutes."

Watching Violet work the equipment with all of the Doctor's usual 'so much more intelligent and advanced' arrogance, he saw Owen had folded his arms over his lab coat, obviously put-out at having lost his medical point-man status. Jack really should just tell Owen to defer to the kid's obviously superior knowledge of the inner workings of a Time Lord mind. Instead, he looked at his watch. "I'll see your five and raise you five more on it only being three minutes."

Toshiko was already working on readings, checking outputs—energy signatures, the flight path of the departing aliens they'd driven away, power readings from the one ship they'd crashed into the pole. Ianto was searching through the catalogs of trinkets that Torchwood Three had picked up over the years to see if there was anything that could possibly help with the diagnosis or reversal of the Doctor's current state. It really didn't leave much to do, other than to watch the two know-it-alls become enflamed with one another.

"I think I've learned a thing or two after all this time about alien physiology. I'm just saying--" Owen came up short when he saw the death-glare Violet was giving him. He held up his hands. "But hey, what do I know? I'm just the bloody stupid human."

Jack quickly looked to Greg, raising a finger, but before he could draw a breath, he was reminded that it only counted if Violet said it, and he only had a minute and fifteen seconds left.

Long, tapered nose flaring, Violet began scanning the Doctor's abdominal region with the sonic screwdriver she'd claimed as her own. "And just how many psychic attacks have you been under, Owen Harper? Hmm? How many have you successfully repelled?" Looking at a monitor, she shook her head. Owen came closer, looking over her shoulder at the unreadable circular characters revolving around the screen. "Well, no psychic alien parasites. Guess that's good." She looked back at the Torchwood medic. "Damnit—give me some room to work here. Can't you find something useful to do? Go bother my mother or something."

She turned to Jack for support. "Can't Doctor Harper be employed more usefully someplace else? Somewhere NOT around me?"

Jack glanced at Greg. "She's gotten tetchy over the years," he noted casually, entirely ignoring her outburst.

Still leaning against the wall, Greg removed a hand from behind his back, gesturing to her. "She has a good heart. Couple of bad experiences back when she was working for Torchwood, though. Low threshold for stupidity, low threshold for humanity."

Violet glared at her lover. "I don't have a low threshold for humanity."

Someone's sleeping on the couch tonight, Jack thought. "Look—we don't have any leads. At least explain to Owen what you're doing. It can be a… valuable learning experience."

Turning from them, Violet pulled back the Doctor's eyelids. "Damned bloody stupid effing freaking damned… idiot humans."

Jack looked at his watch again. "Two minutes, fifty-seven seconds."

Greg moaned. "That doesn't count! She said idiot humans."

Shaking his head, Jack held out a hand. "I accept cash and trade. She said damned twice, and she said stupid once. All in the context of the same insult to humanity."

Seething, Violet glared at all of three of them. "Get OUT! All of you! I'll handle this by myself." Pointing out the door she closed her eyes, then began massaging her temples. "Just leave me alone. I can't think with you lot going on." Letting out a breath, she turned from them. "Can't think at all." The last was just a mutter. "It's too loud in here."

XYZ

About two minutes after she got the testosterone brigade out of the medical bay, her mother returned with the book she'd asked for, and a few more that sounded helpful. Opening up the book of psychic ailments, she flipped to the index to see if anything sounded familiar. While she read through the big list at the beginning of the book, she opened something her mother had brought on a hunch—Technological Implications of Mental First Contacts.

Her mother was flipping through another book on barrier breaches and disorders, using her belly as a reading podium, not really saying anything. She just kept looking from the oversized leather book to the Doctor, like she half-expected him to wake at any moment.

Snapping her own books shut after a few minutes, Violet dug through one more before snatching the text right out of her mother's grasp.

"Hey," Rose reprimanded gently.

Violet looked up sheepishly to her mother. "Sorry. I just—this is bothering me." Exhausted and flustered, she threw herself into the chair next to the bed. "He was fine. Everything was fine. We were running back to the ship, Greg got tagged… I stopped to help him, Jack put down cover fire so we could get back to the TARDIS… and there he was. Just like that. Two minutes. We were two minutes behind him."

Slumping in the chair, she leaned her neck against the back, one leg stretched out in front of her. She clenched her eyes shut. "And nobody'll leave me alone. God. I'm here five minutes and we're off getting each other killed…"

Cool, soft arms wrapped around her and she relaxed into the embrace. "Some day we'll have a reunion that doesn't involve a crisis. 'Course, then we'll probably all be bored. Won't have a damned thing to say to each other."

Sinking further against her mum, Violet wrapped one arm around her midsection, feeling the new life moving within. "You've been busy."

The feeling of her mother's hand on her hair and the high timbre of her mother's laugh somewhat soothed the pain in her head. "Lack of television in the TARDIS."

Her mother looked good for it too. Her mum had to be what? Forty-seven? She still looked just as Violet remembered on their one day together. She was still waiting for her picnic, truth be told—her one perfect day. Hell would probably freeze over before that happened—metaphorical hell, not the Void. That was something else entirely. "They're adorable. Strange… but adorable."

Rose laughed. It was short, staccato and a bit sad. "They say the same thing about you."

Eyes still closed against the agony building up behind her eyes, Violet felt her mum reach past her, probably to grab the Doctor's arm. "Now." Her mother's voice was so even… so reaffirming. "Lets see if we can get to the bottom of this, yeah?"

Rubbing the side of her head vigorously, Violet got to her feet, realising just how wise her mother was. If it were Greg...she'd be having double heart failure by this point. But her mum just ploughed right on.

Coming around the other side of the bed, the young woman sighed, knowing this was going to make her head hurt even worse. "Alright. I guess I can try going back in again. Maybe I can rebuild some of his barriers and defenses…then try to wake him."

She hated this—but what choice did they have? They were coming up empty handed, and so far Captain Jack's people had found just as much—or as little as they had. Both she and Jack had encountered the Gilirs before—they weren't a psychic race by nature, nor did they have the technology to do this. She could go chasing after the remainder of the advance army in her own TARDIS, but who knew how long that would take?

Fingers on the side of the Doctor's head, Violet closed her eyes, trying to put away her own anxiety and discomfort, but still trying to maintain her own barriers.

The second she pushed into the semi-substantial murk of his mind, a jolt went through her and the temptation was to pull away—especially when the rushes of images flooded her mind.

For the first time ever, she saw Gallifrey. Not as it had been represented in the grey and white drawings in her texts, but as it had been—a sky like sunset, even at mid-noon. Spires and towers, reaching up towards the light, close cropped grasses…people in ridiculous robes walking leisurely down ancient stone paths worth smooth in the middle by the repetitive motion.

They were a staunch people who stood very tall, hands clasped in front of them, no emotion on their faces at any point in time.

It was beautiful…it felt like home.

It was also agonisingly boring, stuffy, austere… and the people weren't very nice.

Trying to push past the images of a place she'd never know and the feeling it left in the pit of her stomach, she tried to reach further, beyond things he'd always meant to say to her mother, and had never found the time, memories he'd shared with no one, doing her best to ignore the whole lot of them. It was difficult, and she was only barely maintaining her control. Her body shook with the strain of maintaining mental walls around her own thoughts—it was like holding on to something electrifying and on fire willingly.

Finally, she found it—the thing she hadn't been able to see before—past the subconscious, which was raw and bleeding—the place where his consciousness had retreated. The moment she reached out for it…

The problem was obviously getting worse. That much was evident by how badly she'd been mentally electrocuted upon contact—it had been such a powerful mental force that it had knocked her flat on her bottom.

Besides the now skull-splitting pain in her head, Violet had an intense ringing in the ears. She couldn't make out what her mother was saying. She just knew her mum was standing, looking down at her over a mound of baby belly, and that was somehow amusing.

Putting her head on the metal floor, she closed her eyes, trying to will the ringing to stop. Or the head crushing. Either would be OK.

XYZ

Rose managed to get onto her knees (she was all about adventure—getting to her feet again was going to be a huge one). She put a hand to her grown daughter's cheek—it was so clammy and cold—colder than it should have been. "Violet…"

Second worst family reunion ever.

A slender figure crouched beside her. "What happened?"

As soon as Rose looked up at Gwen, Violet started giggling, her eyes still closed. Turning her attention back to her first born, Rose tried to gently tap the girl's face, hoping to drive her back into awareness.

"She can't hear you," Rom announced, stepping around Gwen. "Her brain's screaming too. But she's ok." He scratched his chest, wriggling around in his slightly oversized t-shirt. "It's like…loud in here."

Looking for her other little cherub, Rose saw him dart up onto the bed. He crawled under the Doctor's arm, pulling the limp limb around him in a pseudo-hug. Twisting around to face the unconscious Time Lord, the boy with the blonde hair and round freckled cheeks began poking the Doctor's face with his index finger. "Shuddup." His finger collided with flesh again. "Shuddup. For totally. Totally shuddup. Or play. Play pirates."

Rose's heart caught in her chest for the first time that day. "We're trying to wake him up, sweetie. Why don't you get down from there?"

The boy looked at her as though she were crazy, and Rose sighed. Another day in the life. Branden went back to poking the Doctor's face, just more quietly.

Violet's eyes fluttered as a moan tore from her lips. "Ungh?"

Her eyes couldn't focus on anyone for a moment, but then she held a hand up, which Gwen took, dragging the young woman to her feet. "Welcome back."

Eyes still blinking rapidly, Violet shook her head. "Can't quite—everything's a jumble," she said loudly, trying to draw in slow, steady breaths." Noticing the chubby eight year old scratching his torso through a solid blue shirt, she instinctively put a hand on his head. "You felt it too, didn't you? The backlash?"

Rose looked away, but Gwen caught her attention, offering a supportive smile. "We'll figure it out." She was so thankful for the solidarity when Gwen hauled her to her swollen feet, then squeezed both of her hands. It meant a lot—she knew that Owen hated her, personally. Ianto hated her children, and the constant noisy disruption to the order of his existence that they represented…Toshiko just tried to ignore her…well, except for occasional light conversation and the frequent attempt to pawn off paperwork. Gwen… she'd never quite had a clear read on. It was like her relationship to Rose (or opinion of Rose) changed with the winds.

"What's happening?" she asked her daughter. But she found herself looking at her older son, perhaps because he'd be the most likely to part with information.

Violet rubbed the side of her head. "Don't know yet. I just know the boys can feel it. They're being dragged under. It's not just the Doctor." The fact that she was also being pulled down by this…whatever it was just went without saying. She'd been thoroughly trounced by her last attempt to wake the Doctor.

Nodding, it gave Rose a few ideas. "Which means 'it' isn't relegated to the incident on the ship—'it' is on-going. But if it's related to what happened on the ship (and what're the odds it's not?) then 'it' is here." She looked to the older of the boys. "Rom… we're going to need to scan the inside of the TARDIS. Mummy can't stay if you're going to do that. Can you do that, and help Violet?"

The boy shrugged. "If I haveta."

Rose ruffled his hair. "Yes, you 'haveta' learn how to work with others." She gestured for Rom to take his sister's hand. "He's pretty decent with anything that isn't a flight control. Don't let him near those." Oh yes, there was a story with that, one she wasn't going to go into just then. "I have to leave. As soon as the ship does anything other than idle…" She wouldn't get into that, either. Death was pretty preferable to the way she felt when the ship was drawing energy from the Vortex to do anything more complicated than life support.

Gwen dragged Brandenburg off of the bed with the prospect of getting to see Captain Jack, and Rose thankfully didn't need to have that fight with the boy. It just wasn't who they were, but there were times when picket fences and lawns seemed like a good idea. "Thanks," she muttered to the other woman as they retreated, leaving two of her children to their own devices. Not that they weren't capable, each in their own way, but… well, she was just being a mum about it.

"Do you want me to stay?" the dark haired woman asked Rose as they got to the door.

She shook her head. "No… I don't know. If you want… They should be alright."

Branden put up a fuss as soon as they got to the door, declaring he wanted to stay with the Doctor. Neither of the adults bothered to mention that just a minute ago, he was declaring that he wanted to live with Captain Jack forever and ever. Children were just fickle like that. They simply grabbed both of his arms and lifted him through the doorway.

A few feet from the ship, the boy started sniffling and it erupted into full-blown red-faced sobbing a step or two after that. Rose knew it wasn't the cry of a little boy not getting his way, or even a child in need of a nap. "What's wrong, Branden?"

The boy just shook his head, rubbed his nose vigorously, still going at it, tears running down his hot cheeks. As soon as Rose felt the agitated squirming within her from someone who should have been very close to running out of room for acrobatic maneuvers, she caught on. "Violet said the ship was shielding the Doctor's psychic blasts, right?"

Gwen nodded, putting the pieces into place as well. "Does the field not extend outside the ship? Or is there something else that's hurting them? Both boys were agitated in the conference room—it's why I brought them into the TARDIS."

Without further discussion, they each took an arm and hauled the boy back into the ship. His sobbing turned to sniffling, which gave way to drooping eyes and a look like he was in desperate need of a nap. The baby also stopped his fidgeting. "Well, that's a problem," Rose muttered, looking around the control room, a hand rubbing her midsection. "This one's quieted down too. Which means whatever's happening is harming him as well. But if they're going to do anything at all to help--scanning the ship, going after those…things… Well, I guess we'll just have to deal with it."

Letting Rose know that she was going to update Jack what was happening, Gwen reached behind her for the door, attempting to unlatch it. When it didn't give, she turned around, putting some muscle into her attempts to jiggle the thing open. "And it would appear that the TARDIS doesn't want us to leave, either." The woman instantly went for her mobile phone.

Holding her sniffling, yawning son to her leg, Rose sighed. "Which means she knows exactly how bad it is. And it's quite possibly worse than we fear."

TBC…


	3. Chapter 3

Jack sighed as he switched off his earpiece. "Well, that's just great." He had been looking over Toshiko's shoulder at the information she'd pulled up, trying to explain the intricacies of Rift energy signature monitoring to Greg when the call had come in from Gwen. They were stuck in the TARDIS, which had gone into some kind of lockdown, which wasn't all that good for Rose. He'd at least been able to inform them that, yes, things were actually even worse than they'd thought—most of the alien craft had retreated, except for a lone ship hanging around the solar system.

Pulling out his own phone, Greg almost gave the TARDIS a ring himself, but then thought better of it. "Never mind. She's probably already thought of using the other TARDIS. Advantage—or disadvantage of being married to someone who can see ten steps ahead of everyone else."

He didn't know why, but Jack's eyes instantly went to the young man's ring finger, confirming what he'd seen before—basically, nothing. "So you two tied the knot?"

Making a face, Greg tried to go back to the figures on the monitor. "Her grandmother insisted." Arms folded across the dark green wool jumper. "Wouldn't let us stay in the same room in her house if we didn't. Like I was going to leave her or something. Cow."

It was a sentiment that the Doctor had expressed more than a few times regarding Rose's mother. "It doesn't look like it's killed you or anything." Jack just reckoned that the kid didn't like being told what to do. He'd never met Jackie Tyler but even the Doctor was slightly afraid of her, and that type of fear fostered resentment.

Toshiko enhanced one of the images a few times, then gestured for Jack to take a look. "It isn't even hiding its presence. It could have hung back behind Mars, and we would have probably lost it on the censors, but look—it's just sitting there. We need to figure out why."

Hands on the Asian woman's shoulders, Jack nodded. "Agreed. I think if we knew that, we'd be pretty close to solving the whole mystery. It looked like the sloppiest forward observer mission in the history of invasion, but then this happens… I don't believe in THAT type of coincidence."

Leaning forward, Greg looked over the fuzzy image of the ship taken from a satellite. "Which means the lousy invasion was just the setup. They were expecting the Doctor to come sort it." He looked up at the enormously high vaulted ceiling. "Sigh," he verbalised dramatically.

Turning around, Toshiko looked up at him, an eyebrow arched. "We could try communicating with it. It could be some very elaborate misunderstanding." But it was evident by how she said it that even she didn't believe that. There was coincidence, and then there was the sort of thing Torchwood was involved in.

Jack put his hands on his hips, contemplating strategy. "Alright. Compose an… ambiguously worded message. We might be on to them, we might not be… whatever. But just ask them all friendly-like if they need anything further now that we've made it clear that Earth is defended."

Tosh nodded and turned back to the computer, her shoulder-length hair flipping as she spun in her chair. "Can-do." She began typing, well-manicured nails clacking against the keyboard without worry. This was who they were, this is what they did.

Looking back to his visitor, Captain Jack gestured with a nod of his head for the young man to follow. The kid, to all appearances, seemed entirely unsuited to this life, but here he was—in the middle of things, and obviously living long enough to still be keeping his present company. Truth be told, Jack thought as he clomped across a footbridge and towards the autopsy room, he liked the kid—he'd wanted to hate someone that innocent and good-natured, but hadn't quite been able to bring himself to. The kid had to have some kind of charm or gravitas if Rose's daughter kept him around, so it wasn't like Jack was just falling for a pretty face. "I suppose it'd be too much to just ask these guys to give up the game because we're so cute, huh?"

Following closely behind, Greg shrugged. "About the same odds as me being allowed to move a recliner into the control room of our ship."

XYZ

Sitting on the floor against the wall, hands limp on her lap, Violet closed her eyes, trying to search for some relief from the pressure in her skull. She tapped her head a few times against the metal wall, but that only made it worse. "So," she muttered, not daring to look at her tiny companion. "Whatda we do?"

She heard the boy sitting a few feet away from her shift uneasily. "Can't check the ship now. Mum gets SO sick. Its terrible."

Eyes still closed, Violet nodded. Her mother had described it as the worst motion sickness ever coupled with the feeling of your atoms being compressed because you're being sucked into a black hole. That seemed like a really bad idea to inflict upon their mum. "Well, that idea's shot to hell. I guess we could go on a treasure hunt. See what we can see. Or whatever." But she was sure the boy felt like it about as much as she did. "After my brains stop exploding." Her head lulled onto her shoulder, and she tried to muster up enough 'go get 'em' to get on with this.

Rom sighed. "This is, like, the worst field trip ever. And there was that one time I got crapped on by Uncle Jack's pterodactyl." The boy moaned pitifully. "This is even worse than dinosaur poo. I didn't think anything'd be worse than dinosaur poo. It dries like cement."

Alright. This was enough. They had to do something about this before Gwen Cooper and her mum had four unconscious people to deal with instead of one unconscious Doctor. "How much do you know about psychic stuff?"

Rubbing the sides of her head, Violet ventured a glance at the boy. He was laying on the floor next to the bed, staring up at the ceiling miserably. "I'm through the Doctor's level four books. If that means anything."

Violet nudged him with her foot, impressed. "Pretty good. I wasn't through those till I was older." Of course, Rom probably hadn't wasted two or three years trying to ignore the fact that he wasn't entirely human. "Trying to nudge his mind didn't work out all that great. I was hoping to wake him or nudge him into throwing up some mental barriers. I don't think the Zero Room will do any good—it's not external interference, it's just his brain…spewing like a broken pipe." Suddenly, now that she was the inadvertent victim of it, she fully appreciated just how powerful his abilities were and how deeply they ran. It was why they needed to get a cap on this as soon as possible. "I think we need to talk to the TARDIS and see what she's doing. Maybe it'll help us figure out what's happening and why."

The boy nodded, scrambling to a sitting position. "Gotta do something about…bflert." A hand made a drilling motion into the side of his head. "Cos I want to take a nap."

That wasn't good. Violet wasn't entirely sure as to the nature of the problem, but she had a pretty good sense that listening to the urge that wanted her to just curl up where she was and sleep would be a bad thing. Rom seemed to sense it too. "Bflert? Is that a technical term?" Getting to her own feet, she wiped her hands free of dust. She'd turned into a bit of a neat freak this time around and didn't need any particles on her black trousers.

Rubbing his chest uncomfortably, Rom shrugged. "It's the sound your brain makes when it explodes."

She knew she was entirely unsuited to motherhood and even the idea of children (hers or someone elses') made her crazy. It surprised her a bit when she took the young man's hand and gave him a sincere and encouraging smile. He was an adorable little thing, with his chubby cheeks and round belly. He also seemed to have boundless enthusiasm, even in light of this being worse than the time he'd been defecated upon by a prehistoric animal. God—how had the Doctor put up with her for all those years? "Alright. Lets see what the TARDIS can tell us."

XYZ

Ianto didn't look up from his computer screen as Jack caught him up on the latest bit of madness, namely the TARDIS lockdown and the lingering alien ship. "And let me tell you, sir, just how heart-broken I am at that. We're on one side of the ship's doors and Satan's children are safely restrained on the other." 

Jack tried not to roll his eyes. Small children made Ianto nuts. Jack kind of wished he'd get a puppy or something, so he could get over it. Just because they were loud, messy, obnoxious little liabilities didn't mean you should run around hating them. Kids were also moderately amusing, in the right circumstances and in small doses. Jack had the best of many worlds—Rom and Branden loved him because he wasn't the Doctor and didn't tell them what to do (there was something oddly fulfilling about having the love and adoration of people who couldn't tie their own shoe laces—it made him feel like a better man than he was), but he also got to give the kids back when he was done. Ianto really needed to see the positives in these situations. "So I was wondering…any ideas?"

Shrugging, Ianto flipped to another screen of inventory. "Nothing that we can prove does anything on any sort of empathic or psychic level, since we don't have a load of people to test these things on."

Sighing Jack turned away from the computer terminal. "Well, I guess I'll call Rose and tell her we've got nothing… not even a response from our little would-be invaders. Horary for us." Sliding his hands into his pockets, Jack looked out over his little fiefdom. "Mmm, maybe we should see if we have something that'll disrupt the temporal locking mechanism of the keyhole on the front of the ship?"

The little gears started clicking away in his head as he leaned against a metal rail, watching his team work. Jack did have to make a concession, now thought he thought about it. "You know…and I hate to say this… but it might not even be the aliens. I mean—I'm sure they're not innocent by any means. But we've got one TARDIS and one Time Lord in this dimension that we didn't have up until today." Of course, how exactly did one solve that little bit of fun?

XYZ

Branden sat on the kitchen table looking utterly miserable, shoes and socks forgotten. Arms tucked under his chest, he was leaning against his mother's shoulder, who was sitting in a chair with him, her belly a barrier between the two.

Sitting at an adjacent side of the square table, Gwen tried once again to interest him in a small stuffed beast of burden. It may have been a bad representation of a cow, or an alien, it was difficult to tell. "We can play with cars if you don't want your toy. Your mum says you have a train that you like." She honestly felt bad—these children might not be normal, but right now, he was just an unhappy, sick-looking little boy.

And they couldn't do anything other than soothe him, and try to keep him awake.

Earlier, Rose had made a point that she had to concur with—if the boy fell asleep, he was entirely likely to end up just like the Doctor. They didn't know what was happening, still, but it seemed like a very, VERY bad idea.

The boy untucked a hand from between himself and his mother and rubbed his nose, muttering amidst the action. "Everyfing's howwible."

Rose kissed the side of the boy's head again, brushing the thin and straight blond hairs off of his sticky forehead. "I know, sweetie. Mummy would make it better if she could."

There wasn't any doubt about that, Gwen knew. Despite the…questionable circumstances the children were being raised in, their mother did care for them deeply.

Nuzzling her shoulder with his head, Branden's eyes began drooping again. "There's good stuff in there. And lotsa bad stuff. I like the good stuff better." He yawned, beginning to give in to the sleepiness again.

Shrugging her shoulder, the boy's mother made him pick his head up. A finger under his chin, she looked into his grey-blue eyes. "In where?"

Suddenly shy, he shrugged, turning to Gwen to save him from having to explain. She shook her head, gesturing for him to just get on with it. The boy slowly turned back to his mother, wringing his hands. "It's the Doctor's brains. They're all over."

Gwen didn't understand it exactly, but it sounded bad. It looked even worse when Rose kissed both of the boy's cheeks, then left his head to rest on her shoulder again. "I'm sorry, Branden. You know the Doctor doesn't mean it, right? He wouldn't make you see that stuff if he could help it."

The boy nodded against Rose's neck. If Gwen understood correctly, the scrawny thirty-something looking man lying in the infirmary was a millennium old. She'd seen a lot of truly awful things in her brief years with Torchwood, and that was only in one time and place. She couldn't imagine the things that must have been floating around inside the Doctor's head, which were now being evicted by his psychic spewing. Branden was picking it up like radio waves, and who knew what the poor child was being inundated with.

A flash of anger passed through Gwen Cooper. Drawing in a deep breath, she stood, going to the cupboards for a glass for water. "Jack's right. This place is too dangerous for children to be hanging about."

"Don't you think I know that," Rose answered defensively. "I didn't ask the Doctor to bring them here. But he'd have gotten himself involved on his own, I'm certain of it. Their being in the Hub had nothing to do with it."

This was their life—but they were adults. They had chosen this. What of children? Branden certainly hadn't chosen to have his only caregiver of the moment swan off to stop an alien invasion, or to potentially have him bring back who knew what, to harm everyone else? "I just mean—this whole thing. What we do. It's not for children." Why was she the only one to see this? Ianto hated being too up-close and personal with children at all, so he had no opinion on the matter, Owen's opinion was tainted by his disdain for the Doctor, and Toshiko had decided on a passive-aggressive tactic of ignoring the Doctor and Rose unless she intended to pick their brains about what was 'out there.' Jack thought this was fine, travelling through space (and time!) with small children. Rose and the Doctor obviously did too. Sometimes she felt like she was the only person with any common sense.

After her glass was full, she stood there holding it, watching the water swirl around in the glass until it settled. She couldn't face the other woman.

When Rose spoke again, it was in a soft, controlled voice that belied what she was actually saying. "Don't you think I know what's out there? I can't even tell you most of it. But I know that you've seen things here, at the rift, you can guess."

Guarded, Gwen turned and lifted the glass to her mouth, judging Rose's reaction through the clear rim. She couldn't quite bring herself to look the other woman directly in the eye. Slowly she lowered it. "Then how can you do this?"

There. The question she'd had for years. Why do this, if you have small children? Why not walk away from this life, at least for a bit? Is this so addictive, that you can't give it up for your offspring? What the hell kind of mother is that?

Rose nudged the boy again, to keep him from drifting off, rubbing his head in an attempt to soothe worries that she couldn't take away—things much too grownup for the boy to process, much less come to terms with. "We settled once. It didn't last long. That's something a bit sad and depressing, you know—we're safer out there—the BOYS are safer out there, then they are on Earth. From my own people. If you think monsters with sharp teeth are scary, imagine men with guns, coming into your house in the middle of the night. Imagine them trying to take your baby away." She looked up at the low metallic ceiling, some horrible event from her past playing out before her eyes.

Still lost in memories, Rose collected her thoughts. When she looked up, her eyes were emotionless, and her voice was cold. "They wouldn't have a normal life here. Where could we live, where they wouldn't be in danger of being taken away? They couldn't go to school—have normal friends. They're better off in the TARDIS. Nothing can get in there. They're better off learning to be what they're meant to be. And if you're asking me to be ashamed about that—it's far too late. I spent years crying for Violet and the things she was meant to suffer. But she doesn't regret it—so I don't. There are worse things in this universe than helping people. There are worse things in this universe to be, than a Time Lord. And if there happen to be a few more in the universe because of me, well, I'm not going to be sorry for that either, or that the Doctor isn't alone any more."

Gwen had no snappy argument for that. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean--"

Shaking her head, Rose grimaced, sliding a hand between herself and her son, rubbing the top of her belly. "Just don't. Most of Torchwood doesn't like me, I get that. Nothing's changed in all these years. I'd say leave my family business to me, but I know it doesn't work that way. I just want you to know—there's more going on here than you know about."

Well, that question was answered, she supposed.

Rose looked down at her son. "Branden," she called softly, trying to shrug her shoulder again, to get him to lift his head, but he didn't move. Patting his back, she said his name again, this time closer to his ear. "Come on. Don't go to sleep…"

Lifting his chin, she saw his eyes closed, lashes splashing innocently across his flushed cheeks, chubby lips parted limply in sleep. She nudged him a few more times, tickled him under the ribs and blew in his face—the boy was well and truly out. Sighing, her shoulders fell in defeat. "This can't be good."

Half a breath later, there was a crash in the control room—something fleshy but hard slamming into the grill floor, rattling the entire thing. The thud was so hard that the reverberation of the metal was enough to cause the lights to flicker in the hall. Gwen leapt to her feet in surprise, eyes wide and reaching for a weapon that wasn't on her person. "That can't be good either."

With a bitter smile, Rose kissed the sleeping boy's head. "Welcome to my world. This is what we lovingly refer to here as 'one thing after another.'"

TBC…


	4. Chapter 4

Standard disclaimers, yadda yadda. Thanks to Rosesbud for betaness. And yes, I acknowledge this story line has outworn its welcome.

XYZ

Chapter Four

XYZ

From his seat in the jump chair, Rom scratched his head then ran his fingers through the big floppy curls piled on top of his head, looking at the console as the green lights died away. "Well, that worked out really well."

His eyes were red and glassy, and he looked like he'd been awake well past his bedtime. Violet was already leaning against the railing, massaging the back of her neck. "Why won't she talk to us?" It should have been even easier with two of them.

Yawning, the boy blinked, trying to keep the tiredness that was creeping over them at bay. "I don't know. Maybe she's all bflert too."

Violet flipped the switch that sent the ship back into an idle state. She was already in one, seeing as how she'd powered herself down, but if she came back online, they didn't want to hurt their mother. Why had she locked them in? The TARDIS wasn't even telling her that. "Ok. That sucked. Jack has nothing. We have nothing. The Doctor hasn't so much as batted an eyelash since we got back from that ship…" Her pocket began twittering, interrupting her train of thought. With an exhausted sigh, she reached deeply in, pulling out a mashed granola bar still in the wrapping, a ball of string and a rubber duck, shoving it all into another pocket before finally reaching the phone. She answered, annoyed with the interruption. "Tell me something brilliant."

Rom hopped off the chair, creeping closer. He climbed the railing she was using for a step stool, straining to hear the conversation.

Violet groaned. "And you have no idea what it is? Of course you don't. That's because you're an idiot." She couldn't help it—she hated Owen Harper. Every time she heard his voice, she hated him a little bit more. Every word brought her one step closer to her eyes exploding. "You know it's a pheromone, but you have no idea what species it's supposed to affect. Great, thank you." She pinched the bridge of her nose.

The voice on the other end was terse. "You know, a little gratitude would be nice. I have managed to divine the impossible from the three poxy readings you let me take. Next I plan on solving world hunger with a paper clip and a stick of chewing gum."

Closing her eyes, Violet wrapped her hand around the rail tighter, trying to hold herself steady. "Yeah, well…"

The phone dropped out of her hand, and she didn't care. The clattering against the grill floor seemed to take forever, each space between bounces stretching out beyond anything reasonable. She could feel herself falling, but that happened so slowly too. She had time to think a world of thoughts.

Was it something with the ship? She'd been caught in a time anomaly within this TARDIS before. Or was it her brain? Was her near-perfect perception of time wavering? Could the Doctor's mental lash out cause something like this?

And what of Owen Harper? She was having trouble remembering why she hated him so much, now that the pressure behind her eyes had released. She should apologise that he was an a—

Her head hit the floor once.

Pheromones. What the hell did pheromones have to do with it? Seriously—they fought the four-ship formation. They destroyed one ship, sent the others packing. The Doctor was running ahead of them, entirely secure in the knowledge that they'd get out, even though she'd stopped to help Greg—Captain Jack saw to that. They came in the TARDIS. Violet hadn't been paying a lick of attention to the control room—she was trying judge how deep the slice in Greg's skin had been, mostly based on the amount of blood soaking through his shirt.

Her head hit the floor for a final time, and she felt it loll to one side. Very weird. The sound that her skull had made against the metal grating was deep and low, not at all what she'd expected to hear.

She was in a lot of trouble if she couldn't make her limbs start working again.

Aww hell, it figured. A theory she wanted to test out regarding the pheromones had just popped into her head, and she was probably going to lose consciousness. Could time drag on any more? What the hell was up with that? She just hoped SHE wasn't slowing time down for real—just what was happening with her brain? Was she spewing psychic runoff like the Doctor, too?

Her eyes finally closed and a swallow worked its way around the back of her throat. She'd come through the Void, finally, after all these years of it being completely closed—no cracks, not even little transmissions slipping through—and she'd promptly gotten herself into trouble.

Oh well. At least she'd met her brothers.

That was so weird. Brothers. She'd been an only child all of her life, now she had two—about to be three brothers. Why was she the only girl? Something really should be done about…

She really wanted to stay awake, but just couldn't. There were too many things pressing in on her mind. As soon as she reinforced one mental barrier, another one fell. Oh well. At least if she was unconscious, her brain would stop hurting…

Something cold hit her face, snapping her out of whatever place she'd been about to go of to. Shuddering with shock, she opened her eyes. Rom was standing over her with a metal jug. "Whew," he breathed dramatically. "That worked," he told the person on the other end of the phone that was crushed between his shoulder and ear. "She was getting all bflerty."

Ok, that was twice now. Violet refused to let there be a third time. She reached out and took the mobile from Rom. "Thanks." It came out as a breathy rush, trembling still from the cold. Her hair dripped onto her coat, just to ensure she was thoroughly drenched. "It's getting worse. Any signs of this happening outside the ship with the compound you found?"

"Ahh, suddenly I'm not so stupid," Owen Harper noted smugly.

Her eyes would probably start bleeding at any moment, but Violet was too tired to fight back. "Can you just check? I can't figure out why the TARDIS would lock us in, if pheromones have anything to do with it, and it's relegated to the inside of the ship. 'Cause, like everything else in my life, this makes no sense." Rubbing her forehead, she grabbed the rail and pulled herself to her feet. "And…can you send the chemical breakdown to my phone?"

There was some tapping in the background, followed by the definitive slamming of an Enter key. "I thought you lot could taste it in the air or something. Maybe you can lick the console like the Doctor does."

Violet's eyes narrowed. "Sod off. I'm trying to solve a real problem here, and I don't have time for--" an eyebrow shot up as the conversation caught up with her addled mind. "He licks the console? That's disgusting. Even for him." She looked to Rom, who just shrugged. "God help mum. If that's not love, sticking with THAT, I don't know what is." She ended the call before Harper could make another snide remark. Yes, her suspicion that her mother was a saint was correct.

Rom was tugging on the middle of his shirt, fidgeting back and forth from one foot to the other, looking at her for a game plan. That was weird. Not being in charge, per se. But having a child look at her like that. Like she knew what the hell she was talking about. Boy would he be surprised… "So what do we do now?"

Opting not to put the phone in the pocket of her drenched coat, Violet shrugged. "I'm going to clear my head with some tea—hope that works—then I'm going to take a look at what that--" she wanted to say prick. Her mother probably wouldn't approve. "What Doctor Harper sent." Ok, well she didn't like him. That went without saying. But usually she could choke down her hostilities for the sake of solving a problem. It was like everything was being exacerbated—tiredness, grumpiness… her desire to strangle that man.

The boy skipped half-heartedly after her. "You should change. Mum doesn't let us run 'round in wet clothes, since that one time, with the sea monkeys."

Sea monkeys? Violet couldn't even fathom what possible series of events could have ended with a rule banning running around wet, and sea monkeys.

XYZ

Gwen set one cup of tea in front Rom and the other in front of Violet, who was still shivering, wet and a tad dazed. She'd gone to see what the sound had been, and had gotten into the control room just as Violet was explaining the new game plan to the boy, and had offered to make the tea. She felt like a bitch for having gone into Rose the way she had—the other woman had been right. There were some things that former PC Cooper just didn't know about.

Men, coming into their home with guns, in the middle of the night…

No, Gwen would suppose, after that, the TARDIS would feel much safer than Earth.

Rose was still sitting at the table, rubbing the head of her sleeping four year old. "You scared the daylights out of me," she quietly told her daughter. "I had no idea what was going on."

Weary, the younger woman took a sip of the tea, making eye contact over the top of the cup. She set it back down, still trying to catch up with everything going on around her. "Scared me too. I—it was my fault. I got mad at Doctor Harper. I started thinking about the problem, and my mental barriers slipped—God. The Doctor's brain is like standing outside a category three hurricane right now, and then with Branden broadcasting on top of that... If it gets much worse, it's going to be doing far more than knocking me onto my back." She rubbed her eyes. "The TARDIS did tell the boys earlier that the Doctor wasn't well. I'll presume it was to get them to come inside. Now she's not talking to us at all. It's like she's completely blocking us out."

Concentrating for a few moments on the cup, she blew, thinking hard about the situation. "And she's locked the door to the cargo level, so I can't get to my ship. We were talking about either moving the Doctor to the Zero Room, or taking a breather there ourselves—but that room is a resource hog. The second we enter, it'll probably start drawing enough energy from the Vortex to make you wish that you've never been born…" She looked to her younger brother significantly, then apologetically back to her mother.

Readjusting the dead weight in her arms, Rose leaned over and gave her daughter's hand a pat. "We'll figure something out. This isn't your fault. Branden…was picking up on the Doctor's memories. He's probably better off unconscious, if that's the case."

Violet nodded, then pushed her cup towards Gwen for a top-up, her eyes showering thanks once the cup was full again. "Except now I can hear him too. I'm having trouble blocking just the Doctor out—now I have another voice to contend with." She looked to Rom. "I think he might actually be fairing better than me, which is a little frightening. You'd better watch that he doesn't try to take over the universe in a few years' time."

The boy stuck out his tongue. "It's not my fault I'm through the level four texts all by myself."

Gwen had to smile. It was almost a normal family conversation. If it weren't for, well, the extreme abnormality of the situation. "With everybody working on this, we're bound to find the answer in quickly," she tried to encourage.

A warm smile was returned by Violet. Gwen had met the young woman a long time ago, back when Violet was—well—a different person, but it seemed like they still had the rapport they'd developed back then. "Thanks. Soon as my head's a little clearer, I'm going to start working on figuring out what that compound is. Hopefully someone outside the ship can tell me if they're detecting it there, as well." She sighed in frustration, but her eyes grew very distant, staring into and through her tea, at some answer that was eluding her gaze. "Why's the TARDIS doing this? I mean—all she needs to do is give us a straight answer."

Rom drained his cup, seemingly impervious to the heat of its contents. "Yeah, why's she ignoring us? We're nice."

Violet rubbed her temple. "I swear. She's doing it because she hates me."

Offering her daughter an indulgent smile, Rose brushed the hair from her four-year-old's forehead. "Yes. She's doing it just because she hates you, personally."

That seemed to bring Violet back to herself, if even for a few moments. "I don't know. Maybe." She sighed. "So other than this mess, making lots of Time Babies and becoming honourary empress of Enj Prime…what've you been up to?"

It was impossible not to laugh. "Alright, who told you about that?"

"Psychic spew. I'm finding out all kinds of things I never wanted to know." She didn't offer any further details.

Gwen put her own cup down. "I'll be right back." It seemed only polite to leave them to it—this was really the first time they've had a chance to speak in a decade. There were things she would just be intruding upon, things she didn't feel she had the right to.

XYZ

Jack eyed his former partner in crime suspiciously. "That's just sick."

The younger of the two finished stirring his mug, putting the spoon on the sink in the small kitchenette. "What? You put sugar in yours. This is practically sugar."

"That's not sugar. That's honey. You just put honey in coffee."

Walking away from the coffee machine, Greg joined him at the glass wall, watching the bustle below in the Hub. "It's practically sugar."

Jack looked up at the ceiling as he took another sip from his mug. Unfortunately, they really had nothing better to do at this point than try to think over something warm, sugary and hopefully mentally stimulating. The last message from the alien straggler was that it needed time to compose a reply, which was little more than a diplomatic stall while they thought up something clever.

Tosh was working on the communications and monitoring the weird energy outputs they were starting to get from the TARDIS, Ianto was now digging through storage on a hunch and Owen was working on the weird compound that he THOUGHT was a pheromone of some kind, but really had nothing to go on, other than similar molecular structures being found in the reproductive processes of certain amphibians. It sounded like a stretch, but it was all they had to work with, and Owen seemed convinced that it was important—important enough to bother talking to Violet about it. As far as Owen was concerned, all aliens who thought they were better than him could go shove it.

Oh well—it had provided about ten minutes of rather obscenely funny entertainment this morning. "Back when I met her the first time, she was kind of gung-ho about the whole humanity thing. I got the feeling she'd chuck away all the Time Lord powers and such if she got to lead a 'normal' life. What happened between now and then?"

Greg turned, shoulder pressed against the glass. "Couple of bad experiences. I was surprised she even kept me around after that last mission with Torchwood." He sighed, swallowing down his emotions with his coffee. Whatever it had been—it had been bad. "Rival group out of Eastern Europe set a rather elaborate trap. Took forever to find her—was like she just disappeared off the face of the earth. Was almost two weeks before we got her back, and by then…." The damage had already been done. Any last delusion the girl had about people or the universe was gone. He just remembered the hollow, vacant look in her eyes as they'd wrapped a blanket around her, pulling her thinner, abused frame out of a cage no bigger than a dog kennel.

The young man shook his head, staring down into his coffee cup. "I was with the team that got her out, and I couldn't believe what—no, maybe I can. Anyway—it was definitely the worst thing she's ever been through, and it was at the hands of people she wanted to be like. I think she feels betrayed, more than anything. It's been seven years and she won't talk about it."

He wasn't sure he had a right to ask, but he did anyway. "And the other?"

Finishing the rest of the coffee, Greg stared down into the mug. "Her grandfather lost the re-election—mostly because she stopped an invasion attempt a couple weeks before the election. The other side spun it hard—basically made it look like he had set the whole thing up, and that Violet was part of the problem. He only ran the first time because of the international debacle that ended up with Violet spending two and a half weeks being dissected and tortured. Then the second time… She didn't take that well either. Now she only goes back to Earth to see her grandparents. She only 'gets involved' when she has no choice. This is probably more humans than she's been around in a couple of years." He put down the empty mug, a bit sad.

Rose had been a bit put off of humanity in recent years as well. She'd had a bad experience when Rom was just a baby, and she'd never quite recovered her equilibrium from it. The Doctor hadn't either, truth be told. Of course, he never said anything—the man perpetually played his cards close to the chest (Jack sometimes still found it difficult to believe that he'd actually managed to procreate—more than once, even! He never asked Rose about her love life, so there might have been, uh, technology involved, but it didn't seem like she was that kind of girl). But Jack knew just how much he limited time on Earth since that incident. He didn't think Branden had ever actually seen the sky on this planet in this time zone, and it was a little sad.

Putting his own mug down, Jack folded his arms over his chest. "Yeah, that'll shake the ol' faith in humanity. Hey, if we can skip to the part where we save the day and everybody's happy and back to normal, this might be good for her. Granted she and Owen don't square off in the autopsy room with bone saws or something."

The kid resisted, but eventually a grin spread across his face. "That was funny. I don't care if it's wrong to think that."

Unable to hold back a laugh, Jack grinned at the kid. Greg was a little evil with how loose he played it with his lover's feelings, but obviously had the 'nice guy' mutant power. Usually they finished last, but it looked like the young man had somehow managed to pull through. Didn't mean Jack couldn't give him a hard time. "I'm telling her you said that." They both stared out into nothingness for a moment.

Suddenly their faces fell. Apparently they both had the same idea at that instant. "Pheromones," Jack muttered, snapping his fingers. "We had it right there in front of us."

Greg dug into his pocket for his phone, his thumb fumbling with the buttons. "I can't believe we didn't think of this before."

Touching his headset, Jack dialed Owen. Or he tried to, at least. All he got was static. A few feet away, Greg tossed the mobile phone onto the table, sighing at its apparent uselessness. "I can't get through to her."

Jack grimaced, gesturing for the young man to follow him to the door. "And I betcha it's the TARDIS running interference. She knows we've figured it out."

TBC…


	5. Chapter 5

Standard disclaimers, Again—shoutout to bestest long-suffering beta Rosesbud

XYZ

Chapter Five

XYZ

Rom was wearing his mug on his head by the time Violet finished her last cupful. Rose had to smile as she scolded him about breaking things and the last time he put something breakable on his head, but it was good to see the boy acting a bit more like himself. "Aww," the boy whined, putting the empty receptacle on the table. "Tea makes me think better…" Seeing he wasn't going to win that battle, especially not with arguments about osmosis, he huffed. "I'm gonna go poke the Doctor."

Rose knew the boy was just worried about the Doctor, and that he wouldn't poke the Time Lord… too much. Mentally or physically. She watched him scurry off, chubby hand scratching his head through the mop of fluffy curls on top of his head. She'd have to go retrieve him soon, otherwise he'd end up in trouble with the medical equipment. He was a good kid, mostly. It was just that his curiosity tended toward the destructive side, and that lent itself to accidental self-harm. Like that time with the Veltian Happiness Crystals, and needing ten stitches in his bum. Kids were far more frightening than anything out there in space, Rose had decided long ago.

Violet removed her wet jacket and picked her younger brother up from the table, asking where his room was. Rose followed her eldest to the room that had long ago been Violet's and tried not to grin at the inevitable onslaught of protests. Sometimes it was just too fun to get her kids worked up. Every last one of them was a gullible creature that took everything straight to heart. "You can't just… give my room away!"

Resting a hand on her tummy, Rose tucked the boy into bed while her daughter looked around at the room redecorated to suit the tastes of a child fascinated with dinosaurs and trains. "It's nearest the control room. Oh come on. You don't think the Doctor put you in here because it's such a nice space."

Actually it was a bit cramped and somewhat awkwardly shaped. It would have been completely square, except for the inward angling of two opposite corners, making the room look more like a Tetris piece. "Because he liked me so much he wanted to spend so much more time with me?"

Glad for the time with her daughter, Rose gave her a pat on the shoulder. "You just keep thinking that. Lets get you changed."

They left the bedroom door open and headed towards the winding staircase at the end of the hall. Grabbing the thin, pipe-like railing, Violet turned back to her mum. "I'm glad things worked out. I'd have felt terrible if I'd have shoved you two through the Void and you'd have ended up in different time zones on opposite ends of the galaxy or something." She grinned. "But I knew it would. Never doubted for a second."

Rose urged the young woman onward. "Uh, yeah about that… Oh never mind. I was going to scold you or something, making decisions for others, not telling us what you were doing… but it's a little late for that, I'm guessing. 'Course it worked out. It was never not going to work out. I can be forceful like that." She smiled. The Doctor could be such a hard case sometimes. Until she batted her eyes and licked her teeth. Then he was all soft and squishy and right in the palm of her hands. "I told him a long time ago, he's stuck with me…and he knows it. Better than marriage vows in some systems."

Violet clomped down the metal steps in front of Rose, twisting around the spiral case with sure footing, almost as if she'd never been gone. "Guess that means you're only legal in those systems. Which I guess is better than Gran forcing you into it with a shotgun and threats of killing all future regenerations." The girl rolled her eyes. "She's only a prude about ME. Which I don't get. Well, anyway, good for him. Nobody likes a maudlin Time Lord."

She knew her daughter wouldn't say it, but Rose could sympathise with the sentiment—she'd felt the same way when Pete and her mother had gotten together, or back together, for the first time. There were some things that warmed the heart and played into the old childhood fantasies of happy endings. "Don't you worry about us crazy old people. What about you?"

Violet shrugged as they passed the bins. "I dunno. Gran's...well, she's gran. Grandad's back at Torchwood after a brief stint in politics that I ruined by having the audacity to save the world. Uncle Mickey retired. Decided he had enough of the running-for-your-life gig and opened a bar in Barbados. And that's about it. Greg and I have just been doing our thing since I got disgusted with Earth and living under gran's roof with her rules, and high tailed it."

The younger woman stopped and turned to face her mother. "I've missed you. I've missed you so much. And I know that's my own doing. And I'm not sorry you two have been happy."

By the time they got to the wardrobe, Violet was yawning again. There probably wasn't enough tea in the world to hold off the onslaught of what she and Rom were trying to keep out of their heads.

Taking one of the hoodies off the hanger, Rose held it up. "Hard to think you were ever this small. You certainly could have done worse with the whole regeneration thing."

Looking at it, the young woman shook her head, mirth playing behind her light blue eyes. "Yeah. I could have ended up with big ears, an oversized nose and the ego to match." She shuddered. "I have no idea how you ever travelled with 'It.' You'd better just keep taking care of this version of the Doctor—you never know what kind of hard-case you'll end up with next."

Violet found something she deemed acceptable—a hip-length black jumper with a high neck--then tied her hair out of her face, rubbing her eyes and trying to wake herself up. "I think the Void's going to stay open this time. There's like a zillion more Gallifreyans keeping it that way now," she announced randomly as she poked through some of her old outfits hanging on a back rack.

Hanging the jacket back up, Rose tried to remain casual about it. "A zillion meaning three, I suppose. Do you think that means you'll stick around for a while?"

Digging things out of the pocket of an old coat, Violet looked through her finds—baubles she hadn't seen in years. "Yeah, maybe. Greg has to square up with his family, at least. I figure we can get away with showing up maybe a week after we left—we'll have to explain the whole time travel thing but they deserve at least that much. I have held him hostage in a parallel dimension for a decade." Her eyebrows arched downward suddenly, and she was lost in thought, hand running down the soft material of the pink corduroy jacket she only ever wore once. "Nah. That's just not possible." She looked at her mother. "Is it? I mean—that's not possible."

"I won't know if it's possible till you tell me what 'it' is," Rose instructed patiently. She'd been with the Doctor long enough that she knew when to let them ramble and when to ask for clarification.

Frowning, Violet shook her head, still not paying attention to her mother. "That's just not—oh come on. That's just not possible. And if it is, what's with the psychic backlash?" Coming back to the moment, Violet looked at her mother, then grabbed the woman's hand, dragging her toward the door. "Lets get Rom and head for the library."

XYZ

Owen looked up from his workbench. "Are you here to exact revenge for having a slagging match with your girlfriend or something?" He looked quite disgusted with the interruption, like Greg couldn't possibly desire anything relevant from the encounter. "Because I'm busy trying to save her backside, you know. And I don't have time for this."

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Greg shrugged. "Wife, actually." It was odd that he'd say it, and say it so casually—they never really talked about being married, not really amongst themselves or with others. Unless they were in a place and time where formal unions were socially necessary for being a member of polite society and just plain not being thrown in jail. Suddenly it was very important to him that this man know their exact relationship. "And I wouldn't do anything like that—that was comedy gold, even if I lost money on it. In fact, I'd pay you fifty big ones if you can get her to call you a stupid bloody ape before the end of the day. Communications are out in the Hub. Jack's talking to Toshiko and he wanted me to run our current little theory by you."

He leaned against the doorway, looking down at the sterile autopsy room. It was a cross between Victorian creepiness and a pristine modern facility, which made it a bit unnerving. It also reminded him of that place Violet had been held in. He'd hated seeing her like that—and all those other poor aliens who'd merely had the misfortune of living on Earth but not being born on Earth. Pete Tyler had nearly started a war over it, and he'd have been right to, if it had worked itself out that way. There were times when Greg began to despise humanity as well.

Biting on the tip of his pen, Owen sat back in his chair regarding the other man. "You're an odd one."

Yeah. Greg admitted he didn't look like much, but somehow he'd managed to survive three years in a Torchwood field unit doing everything from damage control to black ops. He'd also been doing the whole 'time and space' thing for a while. He wouldn't say he let Violet define who he was, but he certainly was having a hell of a time going along for the ride. Going wherever they ended up had turned out to be far more fun than finishing his sensible education, than getting a sensible job and living in a sensible house in a sensible suburb.

Mostly, he was finding out that extreme adaptability was his thing. Snow planet? No problem. Let me run back inside and get some gloves. Fiery hell planet? Got my sunglasses right here. What else cold he do? The day-to-day was just far too intriguing to let little things like being a kept man bother him. Oh yeah, and he'd gotten really good at shooting and blowing things up in his time with Torchwood. So he had skills. None that would help him function in normal society, but he wasn't complaining.

The only thing that could be better about his life right now was if they were to manage the whole making minions—er, having offspring thing. He'd put them in little jump suits and make them call him 'Evil Overlord.' He didn't think that was too much to want out of life. Someone to call him 'evil overlord,' and mean it. It didn't seem to be in the cards right now. Even if Violet ever seemed ready, which would probably be never (even if she did see it as her duty to help repopulate the species—which was fine with him—the occasional bit of duty-bound sex was still sex), according to her own humble estimation, they just hadn't managed it.

He shrugged at Owen. "Keeps 'em guessing. Now, what Jack and I were thinking, about the airborne stuff you detected inside the ship…we were thinking maybe that didn't come from the aliens. What if it came from inside the ship?"

XYZ

Toshiko pushed the glasses up on her nose as she read the response. "'We regret our impromptu action against your planet; we were unaware of its protected status'," she began.

Hands in his trouser pockets, Jack scoffed. "Interpretation: oh, I'm sorry, we didn't know you had Time Lords on your side or that your planet was defended. We thought it'd be easy pickin's. Kiss, kiss, please don't hurt us."

Turning back to her monitor, Tosh ignored his response. "'However, we hope to share in the joy of your blessed event, and seek to pay tribute,' Jack? That's just odd. The way they word it, you'd think they want to bring gold, frankincense and myrrh."

Reading the message over, Jack tried to think up an open-ended reply that would tease some more information out of them. "Yeah, I think we're fresh out of messiah figures. And I can personally say that Rose aint no Virgin Mary. But Greg and I have an idea—it's a stretch, but this message makes it seem just a little more plausible."

XYZ

"Roman Carpathia Tyler, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Rose asked loudly, before she could stop herself.

Rom turned around, shoulders scrunched up near his ears, eyes batting with feigned innocence. He let out a tiny chuckle. "Just playin.' Honest."

Rose pointed to the Doctor, who was still dead to the world. "Get those carrots out of his nose right now. And take the marshmallows out of his mouth before he suffocates!" She groaned in disgust. "Can we just get through this without you causing anyone to regenerate from asphyxiation, please?"

Hand to her mouth, Violet had to hold back the chuckle building there. She'd done some horrible things as a child (usually involving the sonic screwdriver) but she'd never tried to turn the Doctor into an edible sculpture. "You should have let me take a picture first," she whispered to her mother, phone already in hand.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Don't you dare side with him. And don't you dare encourage him. He doesn't need encouragement to do ANYTHING. As soon as the idea's in his head, it's been done and someone's in the medlab, usually getting stitches."

Biting back another chuckle, Violet extricated Rom from the bed. "We're going to the library, mate. Time for some ancient history." The boy made a few whining sounds, and Violet wondered what it would have been like to travel with her mother, the way Rom and Branden had the opportunity to. Well, no point in dwelling on what wasn't and what hadn't been. History could be rewritten with the snap of a finger. Personal history—best not dabbled in. "How much Gallifreyan can you read?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Level four books."

Wasn't he just a clever thing? "Well, then you're going to get all the level four history books to look through. We've got a weird one on our hands." Putting a hand on his head, she ushered him down the hall, her mother on their heels.

"And you still haven't told me what that is," her mum urged with a bit of impatience. "Because, really—I have an unconscious four year old and unconscious Time Lord and a cranky pre-born who doesn't seem to realise he's out of room for the fussing he's doing. I'd like to at least know why Arten's tearing through my stomach to get out."

Violet groaned, pushing the door open for the library. "Please tell me his name isn't going to be Arten Lodi Prime."

Something evil glinted in Rose's eyes. "Be thankful I was unconscious when you were born and your grandmother took the liberty of naming you, otherwise you'd have been Barcelona Minor Tyler."

Parents were put in the universe to torture their children. That was the only reasonable conclusion that Violet could come to. "And I thought being named after a plant was rough." She owed her grandmother a debt she could never repay for getting 'Violet Marie Tyler' on the record books before her mum regained consciousness and she was saddled with a name like Barcelona. "You have a real mean streak about you."

Grabbing a dozen books and stacking them on the large wooden table, Violet avoided the cushy leather chairs, instead opting to hop up next to the books. Even a hardback chair wouldn't do—she'd probably still manage to drift off. "Alright, Rom. We're looking for anything we can find on TARDIS production."

The boy sat next to his mother on one of the oversized chairs and cracked open a book that was almost as big as he was. "Like, looms and stuff?"

Violet shook her head. "Before looms. They had to have some way of growing TARDISes before looms, because there weren't any looms before Rassilon."

Rom twitched his nose back and forth, thinking as he flipped through pages. "Well, Captain Jack has a piece of one on his desk. Maybe they grow like starfish."

"Well, that's part of how the looms worked," Violet muttered, grabbing the next book. "But there has to be something else. This ship's a type forty. Which means there were at least thirty-nine different types before it, who knew how many after it. Besides the looms, besides growing a TARDIS like a starfish, there has to be another way to grow a TARDIS."

Passing Rom the next book, Rose mulled it over, biting her cheek. She went back to rubbing her belly a few seconds later. "Ok, and what does growing TARDISes have to do with all of this?"

Violet let out a tired giggle. "Well, I've been thinking—there needs to be some other way to introduce new genetic material into the mix, to breed the different types." She swallowed, trying not to laugh, but she was exhausted, and suddenly everything was funny. "I think we're trapped in the middle of TARDIS mating season."

TBC…


	6. Chapter 6

Standard disclaimers. Thanks to Rosesbud for beta help

XYZ

Chapter Six

XYZ

Shifting his weight back and forth, Jack mulled over their reply. "Ok, I got it. Ambiguous—but leading. We'd thank them to avoid any future invasion attempts, as they won't end well. However, in the honour of this 'blessed' event, we will bestow forgiveness upon them and we seek to know how they wish to participate or pay tribute." He nodded his head when he was done, quite pleased with himself.

Toshiko finished pecking then look up at him. "Anything else?"

Jack stepped away from the computer, getting ready to see what was taking Ianto so long. "That sounds good. In the mean time, see where the other two ships are. I want to make sure it's not some kind of fake out, or a Trojan Horse. You know—I'd almost rather the aliens had something to do with it. Then we could kick their tails and be on our way with this. But no. We have to deal with a disgruntled TARDIS in addition to the aliens." He shook his head, staring at the floor in discontent. "And I had a nice quiet Sunday planned."

Shaking her head as he left, Toshiko went back to typing. From a purely academic standpoint, the whole thing was fascinating. Of course, there were many creatures that had the ability to shift reproductive means, according to environment. Some changed sex, some changed methods entirely.

Sending the message, she flipped back to the black and green display of the energy readings picked up from a few satellites. She'd have to run a few formulas to determine the distance of the other ships, based on the energy signatures, to the Earth, but it wasn't anything major. It gave her mind a chance to work over the other problem.

She'd never fully managed to nail down from Rose or the Doctor the true nature of the TARDIS. The majority of the information she had filed away in her mind was derived from their eldest boy, Rom. TARDIS' were machines, but they also had an organic nature and a psychic, empathic component that caused them to bond with a Time Lord.

It wasn't that far fetched. She'd seen the schematics of the inner workings of a Dalek, and those were little more than disgusting little slime creatures encased in battle-ready shells that just so happened to be near-unstoppable. The minds of the creatures melded with the electro-mechanical systems, making the exoskeleton an extension of the thoughts and will of the otherwise near-helpless creature inside.

She wasn't sure as to the intelligence level of a TARDIS, but certainly a biological imperative could make it go to extremes? Hell—the Doctor was an arrogant bastard (it was that special way he swanned in here, acting like he knew everything about everything that tipped Tosh off to that particular personality traith). He'd also been an ancient git back in Shakespeare's time, but somehow he'd managed to produce offspring and continue his nearly-extinct species. Proof that love was blind, perhaps—but more likely proof that biological imperative was a force of nature all of its own.

It was an amazing thing to be sure—from her understanding, neither Time Lords nor TARDIS' had needed to reproduce in a manner requiring actual coupling in who knew how long, but when push came to shove…

The ships were hanging on the edge of the solar system. They wouldn't be an immediate problem or threat, so there wasn't any reason to alert any of the world's military organisations. It was entirely possible they could get through this situation without having to do anything of that sort.

That determination made, she began to look through Owen's data, just on a hunch. The thing was—the psychic nature of the TARDIS and the psychic 'issues' going around seemed to be related—sure, a tad in conflict with one another, but they couldn't be coincidental.

Of course, they were fresh out of people with psychic abilities who were not inside the ship. It wasn't like they had additional means, other than the technological ones available to them, to gather information, or to test theories. It didn't help that they had no means of communicating with anyone inside the ship.

It wasn't a problem she could kick, punch or shoot, so wrapping her formidable mind around it was what she had left. And this was a pretty problem. She shouldn't be enjoying this… but she was.

XYZ

Licking the hazelnut-chocolate spread from her fingers, Violet looked up at the ceiling. "I'm going to—I'm going to ground him for the next three hundred years," she grumbled, working the gooey substance around her mouth before swallowing. "Like—seriously. What the hell?"

They'd moved from caffeine to anything with sugar in it about five minutes ago to try and stay awake. She was washing it down with a big glass of water, as if that would somehow help the soul-crushing headache.

Rom chased some chocolate around his lips with a fast-moving but largely ineffective tongue. "I spend my life grounded. Can you ground a TARDIS?"

Violet's eyes narrowed. "I'll find a way. Of all the stupid--"

Sitting back further in the kitchen chair, Rose shifted uncomfortably. Violet's soon-to-be badly named sibling was still giving her mum a hard time, it seemed. It wasn't surprising; figuring out the problem had done nothing to solve it. If anything, it had gotten worse.

They'd retreated to the kitchen after learning nothing new to find Gwen washing dishes. That had been a bit weird, but it seemed that she'd been in need of something to do, and hadn't been too keen about wandering around the ship. Violet didn't blame her—they'd probably not notice that she was missing for a week, and then it'd take another week for the search parties to find her in the ship. Gwen was leaning against the counter now, drinking a mug of who-knew-what and watching them quietly.

This could have been normal. It was so very close to normal. The kitchen was the gathering place in her grandfather's house. There'd always be something hot to drink and something that'd ruin your dinner to eat, and everyone would sit or stand around and just chat. It was where family-type problems were mulled over, stories shared, consolation given…

She wanted to ask Rom if that's how the kitchen was on the TARDIS now, with her mum there. Knowing she was doing it again, dwelling on what wasn't, didn't stop her from doing it.

Sticking her finger back in the jar, she pulled out another glob of chocolate. Yeah, she was getting germs all over the place. But at least she didn't lick the console. "I swear—they're both in trouble. What's happening to the Doctor and Branden, if that's all it is—TARDIS mating season?"

Gwen put the mug on the counter beside her. "Well, if the usual means of reproduction were detrimental to Time Lords, that'd seem like pretty good incentive to find some other way of making more ships."

Rom took the jar from Violet and dug his spoon in, scraping the sides of the plastic container. "So they're just gonna kill us. She locks us in here, and she's gonna keep beatin' our brains till we're dead." He sighed. "The Doctor'd know how ta fix it," he muttered before shoving the spoon in his mouth.

"But he's not here, so we have to work it out ourselves," the boy's mother said patiently. "Gwen said it before—we'll figure it out. It'll be alright." She didn't sound so sure, nor did she look very sure, when she was rubbing her belly like that.

Licking her lips and contemplating the contents of the sugar bowl, Violet wondered just how wrong it'd really be… this was an emergency, ya? They needed the blood pumping. So it wasn't wrong to eat granulated sugar in an emergency. "It was worse outside the ship." She groaned in frustration. "So she's killing us for our own good."

Picking the mug back up, Gwen crossed one ankle over the other, still leaning against the cupboard doors. "It sounds like something like that."

Rose pulled the sugar bowl away from her daughter. "At least find something that pretends to have nutritional value in addition to sugar. Maybe we just have to hang on. You know, just put up with it until all of this is over-with."

Violet and Rom looked at each other, then guiltily fixated on the empty jar between them.

Gwen was just the first person to ask it. "What is it?"

Looking at both Gwen and her mother, Violet let out a tiny uncomfortable laugh. "There's just one problem with that idea. From what we were reading… this could last up to six days."

Rom's thumb, already clean of any chocolate, slammed into his mouth and he began sucking nervously. Even he knew that neither of them would make it that long, and there was no telling what would happen if he and Violet didn't hold it together, especially to their unborn brother.

XYZ

When Jack had come up from the lowest basement, he'd left Ianto hip deep in a room full of items they had yet to catalog. He couldn't quite get a read on the way Ianto was working on the problem—sure he'd locked himself in a subbasement, far away from the havoc that had been wreaked on the hub by Rose Tyler's little cherubs, but he was also doing a mental catalog of anything that could prove useful in the current situation and was pulling out anything that seemed to have a psychic or empathic reading to it for further analysis, which was a pretty lousy and thankless job.

Of course, Ianto seemed to get off on those. It was quite possibly the only way to be a cleaner for as long as he'd been for Torchwood. Dispose of the odd body, make it look like a horrible disfiguring accident or a suicide, strip files and records of people's existence, make some really great tea. Ianto probably had some issues he needed to work through, besides his distain for little miniature order-wreckers.

He passed through Owen's lab, to see if the medic had found anything, but the place was empty. There were three people crowding Toshiko's work area, though, uncomfortably standing around a single monitor as information scrolled by. He trod lightly across one of the footbridges and came up next to them. "I don't know what this is, but it doesn't look good."

Three faces scrunched in concentration turned to face him.

"Really not good," seeing the look on their faces.

Owen folded his arms over his chest, the first to get his shit together. "Oh, nothing unusual—it's just invasion take two."

Jack pushed between Owen and Greg, practically knocking the young man into Tosh as he dove for the monitor. "What? I thought they were paying tribute! Gold, frankincense, myrrh. We have a blessed event going on, here!"

And sure enough—four cruisers, and according to Tosh's readings, more sitting beyond the solar system. She pointed to the formation attempting to use the moon for cover. "It's possible they do see it as some kind of sacred event. But they also probably see it as an opportunity. No TARDISes means no interruptions."

Greg sighed. "Got anything capable of battle in space? Because otherwise we're going to be taking it up the bum from some green and purple aliens in about forty five minutes."

Frustrated that this was all going to pot—right after things were starting to look up—Jack ran his hands through his hair. "See if we can get them on the horn again. Try one more time to be reasonable and…stuff." Oh that sounded official. "I'm going to call London. God. I HATE calling London." Mostly because odds were higher that they'd botch the situation. More staff and better equipment mostly meant they had a higher threshold for incompetence—and it wasn't like they'd learned from the Cyberman invasion and the office being decimated. Of course, if it had been decimated, there'd have been more people left alive. The London office had been annihilated.

Turning around, he headed for his office and the unpleasant task of involving other parts of the organisation and the military. At his office door, he turned around, gesturing for Greg's attention. "See what you can do about contacting anyone inside the TARDIS. If we're right, the ship HAS to know we're on to her, in which case there's no reason to keep up with all this. We need at least one functioning ship before London gets involved, otherwise we're going to have a mess of monolithic proportions on our hands."

The kid nodded, tearing out his phone and walking away from the group. By the time Jack was at his desk, Owen was in his doorway. Oh more not-goodness. It's the only reason the other man would be leaning against the frame, looking at him like that—mouth pulled back, taught and grim. The one that was satisfied that he was right, but also kind of sorry about it too. "We have some other problems."

Jack sat back in his chair, waiting for his medic to lay it on him. "Of course we do."

Owen stepped inside and closed the door behind him, arms still crossed. "I didn't say anything before because I didn't want to get the kid worked up, incase he turned out to be a spaz. Now, I don't have any way of confirming it, which actually makes me more worried—this could be worse than the computer models predict, especially because of our limited knowledge of all things psychic."

Gesturing for Owen to continue, Jack folded his hands on the desk. "And?"

The other man stepped forward with something Jack could have sworn was hesitation. Owen might not enjoy being the bearer of bad news, but he'd never shied away from it before. "Exposure to the chemicals being emitted by the ship can cause permanent damage to brain function in as little as twenty four hours. Trust me, it ain't the Doctor I'm worried about—no one'll notice a little more brain damage on him. Or the other one. But I'm thinkin', the smaller they are, the sooner they're going to start having problems."

Jack nodded. "What about Rose and Gwen? Or the rest of us for that matter."

Unfolding a piece of paper with some chemical analysis printed on it, Owen put it on the desk and pushed it towards Jack. "I think we're ok, even though the higher concentrations are outside the ship. But I also haven't noticed any changes in cognitive function in anyone yet."

Turning the paper over in his hand, he looked at the percentages of compounds. He didn't want to, but he had to ask—he had to be sure. "So it's just affecting Gallifreyan physiology. Ok. How do we know that?"

Owen pointed to the figure he'd highlighted. "From the few readings I managed to get off the medical equipment before Princess Nutters kicked us out of the ship, and from a few things Tosh picked up when she was going through my reports. She's managed to drag a little information out of the Doctor and Roman over time regarding regeneration and the types of neurological changes involved. I don't think it's so much that you've got two people in there who've already regenerated—you've got three more who're capable of it, which means they're neurologically prepared, should the need arise."

He sat down across from Jack, one ankle resting on his other knee as he sank into the chair, tired. This was supposed to have been their day off. "The changes involved with regeneration leave them psychically vulnerable to outside influence. Tosh suspects that this is basically what that is—all the nasty side effects of regeneration without the actual regeneration. At least in the Doctor's case, if he's being bombarded with chemicals that're eroding his natural barriers, in addition to whatever psychic madness is coming at him from the ship, it makes sense that not only is he being nailed with everything going on around him (hence the ship locking everyone inside) but he's going to start projecting everything in his own head."

Jack nodded, getting it. "So he and the boys would have been fifty times worse outside of the ship, but what it comes down to is we have to find some way to interrupt the TARDIS mating dance before she inadvertently kills her crew."

Owen spread his hands in some kind of concession or defeat. "Something like that."

Picking up the receiver on the phone, Jack yawned as he prepared to deal with his alien invasion problem. "If we manage to still have an Earth tomorrow, and manage to not kill the only Time Lords in any universe, I'm declaring it an office holiday."

TBC…


	7. Chapter 7

Rose winced as she poured the coffee into the second mug. "You think I'm a bad parent? I'm about to stunt my eight-year-old's growth with caffeine and give him enough sugar to bring about the fall of the third, fourth and fifth Great and Bountiful Human Empires."

At the counter, Gwen looked up, startled out of her thoughts. "I didn't say that."

Shaking two packets of cocoa, Rose glanced to her partner in this exercise. It wasn't exciting, but it was necessary. The real adventure was going to be after everything settled, most likely, and the caffeine ran its course. "You didn't have to."

"I'm sorry," Gwen responded in a measured, calm voice. "I didn't know what had happened. You're probably right, this is probably better for them." As soon as it came out of her mouth, Gwen realised just how sarcastic that had sounded.

Licking some powder off of her thumb, Rose scrunched up the paper envelopes. "There aren't any certainties in this universe. But they have higher odds of being flattened by a bus on Earth on their way to school, doing the day-to-day, than something…permanent happening out there. And they're not normal children by Earth standards. I made that mistake with Violet, and she had trouble turning it around. If she wouldn't have figured all of this out, she would be dead twice over by now."

"I spoke out of turn," Gwen said, sounding like a strange echo from the past. "I'm sorry." She began opening cupboard doors, searching for anything else. Her hand stopped on the door to the last cupboard and she looked back to Rose, though, when she felt the other woman staring at her. "I wanted children." Gwen froze, wondering where that had come from. No, she knew where it had come from—it was the self-acknowledged root of the strangeness in her relationship with the Doctor's companion. What she didn't know was how that had slipped out.

Searching for a spoon, Rose went back to the evil concoction that would disqualify her from every parenting award on the planet. "Then figure something out. If all you do is hunt things in the dark, it'll infect you. That can't be all you have." There was a sort of knowing wisdom about that—Rose had obviously been there. "There IS so much darkness out there. Frightening, evil things. But there's good out there too. And if you don't hold on to the good, all you'll see is the bad. Pretty soon it looks like all there is."

Gwen had no idea what to do with that statement. It would take her ages to make some sense of it, and her feelings on the matter. "But…this…"

Rose shook her head. "Special circumstances. Usually the fate of the world doesn't rest upon my eight year old's ability to stay awake. It did rest upon his ability to beat a pinball game once, but we don't talk about that." She smiled, trying to turn the conversation around. "I know, if we all live through this, I'm going to severely, severely regret this. In that special 'having Rom bouncing off the walls for four days straight' kind of way." She proceeded to dump chocolate powder into both of the oversized mugs, stirring the hot cocoa mix in, then adding additional sugar and a handful of marshmallows on top of each. "OH well. The Doctor can stay up with him. Hope he's enjoying his nap." The last was muttered ruefully, her eyes twinkling. She looked down at her bulge. "Last bit of sleep he ever gets."

She picked up both mugs and Gwen threw the bag of marshmallows on the tray piled high with every sugar-infused piece of food they could find. Gwen had also found some gumballs, which no one could determine the age of. They decided to include them. On general principle, Rose would have said no (you especially didn't want to eat any sweets out of the Doctor's pockets, they could be several hundred years old), but they were primarily sugar, which could only be a good thing at this point.

"This is yet another one of those special circumstances," Rose breathed. "Where saving the world involves doing something entirely contradictory to logical parenting. I hate that. Sets a bad precedent and you end up losing ground when you want them to go to bed at a normal time or something and the world ISN'T ending. They're just too young to understand that nuance."

Gwen pushed the kitchen door open with her backside and they both made their way to the control room, glad the tension had passed. But while they were being honest... "I wish we were doing something," she whispered, seeming to pick up on Rose's agitation.

Sighing, Rose looked down again at her belly. "Three or four more weeks, God willing. 'Course, we all haveta live that long." She gave Gwen a weak smile. "Well, it's not something I can blow up or run away from, so I guess that leaves me in a…support role at the moment." Shrugging, she turned the corner, glancing back at Gwen. "What can we do about it? I certainly can't hack the TARDIS, and you can't try to persuade her to stop…doing what she's doing. So that leaves us trying to keep the last two people capable of communicating with the ship awake."

"And hoping Rom doesn't get any ideas about keeping to this new diet." Gwen looked at the stack of junk food.

They stopped at the door to the control room, watching Violet and her younger brother work for a moment. The two seemed to be on the same page and were working intensely and silently in the greenish glow of the console. "The boy already loves his food a little to much," Rose muttered, coming around the catwalk toward the column. "That's just what I need, another sugar addict running around the TARDIS."

Setting the tray down on the floor next to Violet, who was digging around under the console, Gwen took a step back. Rom glanced at the stack of goodies but went back to messing with the innards of someone's mobile phone. "Try it again," the boy ordered.

There was a pinkish-green flash from below the grill floor and the phone lit up. "Well, that's a little better," Violet announced, her voice muffled by the mass of wires she was digging around in. "At least I didn't get shocked that time." She stuck her head up and looked at Rom, ignoring everyone else in the control room. "Dialing?"

Pressing a button, the boy raised it to his ear. "We have ringing." He handed it over.

Crawling out of the hole, Violet held the phone to the side of her face. She let out a tired huff. "You shouldn't haveta fight your own TARDIS. Seriously—we're on to her. What's the big deal?"

The call connected to something—voice mail from the frustrated groan they heard from Violet. Disconnecting, she put the phone on the grate floor and picked up something chocolatey from the tray then looked up at her mother. It was then that both women saw the dark circles under her drooping eyes. "Thanks. I just wish…" she sighed. "If wishes were fishes and all that. I guess I'll try again in a few minutes." She rubbed an eye and picked up the nearest mug.

Rom drained his mug in about seven seconds. Gwen wasn't entirely sure the boy had gulped—he may have just let it run straight down his throat. She decided to help Rose and took the mug off of him before he could put it on his head. The boy scratched the side of his head, going a bit cross-eyed. "Something's up."

Violet froze right where she was, mug to her lips. "Yeah. I felt it."

Shuffling to his feet, Rom nodded. "It's quieter in here. Lighter even." He licked some chocolate off of his thumb. "I think the Doctor's awake."

Rose was off like a shot, not bothering to thank her son or spare his feelings. Well, she wasn't quite that fast. Mostly she was moving as quickly as her ample-sized body would let her. Her first stop was Branden's room—he was still asleep, mouth hanging open and entirely dead to the world.

Out of breath, she made it to the medical bay to see the Doctor moaning as he tried to sit up, one hand to the side of his head. Huffing, she waddled over to him. "Are you alright?" Was it too much to hope for, that this just be over-with?

He looked at her with slightly out-of-focus eyes as though he were surprised to see her there. "Huh?" Closing one eye, he looked at her stomach, and that was somehow startling to him. That lone eye grew wide, then closed, his head falling back upon the pillow. "You're fat. That's weird."

Rose smirked. Rom had definitely gotten his sense for stating the obvious…locally, as it were. "I had help. What do you remember?"

The Doctor sighed, sinking further into the cushion behind his head. "Ponies…no wait. That isn't right. I remember…something about a monarchy of trousers."

A snort rolled out of Rose's nose before she could stop herself. "That'd be an emperor of pants, and that wasn't this one. That was the one I just had to stop from eating sugar straight from the bowl. As I recall, this one involved pretzels, cheese dip and something about 'the secret ingredient' in the Lotsra system." She rubbed her stomach, which had gone calm for the first time all day.

Somehow the Doctor managed to sink even further into the pillow—any more and it'd envelope his head like a Venus fly trap. The baby gave a swift kick into her lungs (apparently the only place she still had room for him to move around—she obviously didn't need those silly internal organs). Air rushing out of her chest, she had a double dose of panic.

Gently shaking his shoulder, Rose called to him quietly. "Doctor--"

He let out a deep breath. "Not got long. Fighting it off. Not the ship's fault, she didn't know."

Sitting beside him, Rose brushed the hair from his forehead and kissed it. "Do you know how to stop it? What can we do?"

Opening his eyes again, the Doctor squinted. "Dunno."

"Some help you are," she told him lightly, trying to hide her concern. "Wake up just to tell us you don't know anything more than we do."

Head sinking further into the pillow, his eyes rolled backward for a moment, and Rose thought that was it. Fortunately he managed to open them again a second or two later. "Branden's mind is scary. Every third thought is microwaved hotdogs." His lips twisted as he groaned in disgust. "And Violet…" it was amazing how rapidly his eyes lost their focus. "Just--humans aren't so bad. And three X seven squared…Three X five. The plumbing access tunnels…there's a fifth." His voice trailed off as his eyes closed again. "Cut the auxiliary and force a dump. Three X…" if he was going to say something else, it was lost when the remainder of his breath rushed out of him, and he was asleep again.

Great. What in the world had he just said?

"You know," Violet grumbled from behind her. "If he's going to go Deus Ex Machena on us, the least he could do is bother to make sense."

Squirming to her feet, Rose grinned at her daughter, trying to ignore just how much Violet looked like she'd been run over by a bus. "Where's the fun in that?"

The younger woman groaned, folding her arms over her chest. "Please, just don't."

Without saying anything further, Rose made her way to the door. Nothing else to be done here, she supposed. The sleeping body on the bed certainly wasn't going anywhere and her time could be better spent making sure Rom didn't go the same way, or at least didn't do something stupid in his sugar-induced psychosis.

Gwen might feel like she had nothing at all to do, But Rose had her hands positively full with all of this 'nothing' to do.

Like take now, for instance. The ship was trembling, the cloister bell was chiming, the baby was trying to kick its way out, like that alien from that movie, and Violet had just fallen through the doorway, smashing against the wall and sliding down it, her whole body seeming to have turned to jelly.

Grabbing hold of he doorway to keep herself from falling as well, Rose clenched her eyes shut, listening to the high-pitched rattling of the medical equipment from beneath the obese intonations of the cloister bell. They were parked solidly on the ground, which meant the destabilisation had to be coming from the dimensions within the ship.

Teeth clenched together, they still rattled as her grip nearly slipped from the doorway. The only question Rose still had left was whether the shaking was due to the ship itself, and the weird behavior she was now engaged in, or due to some new psychic backlash on the part of the Doctor.

And then it stopped. It stopped so suddenly she almost questioned whether it had happened at all. Crouching beside her daughter, Rose slapped the young woman's cheek (god—when the hell had Violet grown up, and why had she been forced to miss it?), gently at first, but with more vigor when she relised the lack of effect it was having. "Vi—Violet, sweetie—now's not a good time…"

Understatement, she knew. But a rather accurate summation. Especially when she was suddenly knocked to the floor as the trembling started again.

XYZ

Ok, this was weird. And she knew weird. This was… nuts. Crazy.

It was one of her own memories, she was sure of that. The pink and gold embroidered dress was horrifically familiar—seventeen hundreds, Italy…ending locked up in an attic for two days by aliens who'd realised she was on to their little plot.

God, she'd always resented that the Doctor could just run around in his every-day clothes and fit in almost anywhere, while she'd been forced to make use of the wardrobe on a consistent basis, every time they travelled to some period in the Earth's history prior to her own birth. Slacks could get you killed in some places.

It wasn't the reoccurrence of the evil pink and gold dress that bothered her. Nor was it that she seemed to be viewing it from a perspective that she could only assume was the Doctor's—closing the space across the attic, fumbling for the sonic screwdriver to release the little figure in the dress from the chains. That all seemed perfectly tame to her mind.

It was the fact that Branden was the one wearing the dress that made this a little weird. What made it REALLY weird is that the bony little boy looked better in the dress than she had. "What're you doing in my memories?" she asked the boy, glad she had at least that much control over this whole dream thing to at least do that.

Tugging on the chains, he could barely hoist the shackles up for her to see. "Your dreams suck."

Laughing, she tugged on the chains, pulling them away from the lock then used the sonic screwdriver to disrupt the locking mechanism. Easy as pie. Easy as how this had actually played out , back in her own childhood. Cuffs came undone and the tiny hands slid free of them. "Your brain's stupid," the boy reiterated. "Doctor's brain's stupider."

Holding out a hand, she hauled him to his feet. "Which doesn't tell me how you got in here."

The boy shrugged, squirming in the dress. "It's not your memory. It's the Doctor's. And he's not using it."

Oh great. The lights were on, but no one was home, as it were. "He was just awake. Then he passed out again, and the ship started shaking. So I guess we have to figure out what's going on."

The boy blew his light blonde fringe off of his forehead. "TARDISes're bumpin' uglies," he aid, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She wasn't entirely sure that a four year old should know euphemisms like that, much less understand what they meant. Captain Jack was probably somehow to blame. "An' the Doctor's brain's everywhere. I keep chasin' the bits n'pieces. Tryin' ta get out."

Not sure what else to do, Violet sat down next to him. "Looks like I'm stuck here too. But the Doctor got out. Even if it was just a minute or two—he did it. And he was telling me how to stop the TARDIS from turning our brains into egg drop soup." Pulling her knees to her chest, she had a renewed sympathy for Branden in the dress when she looked down at the Doctor's brown trousers wrapped around her legs. "You're right. The Doctor's brain sucks." Letting out a breath, she took the boy's hand, trying to think of something. What the hell could she do, if she was unconscious? The Doctor had gotten out—how had he done it?

TBC…


	8. Chapter 8

The lanky Indian in the forest green sweater and baggy cargo jeans clasped his hands behind his neck and sighed, continuing to pace behind Toshiko's work area. He let out a gushing breath of frustration causing Jack to look up at him. "You know, you're welcome to contribute, if YOU have any bright ideas."

Stopping, the young man looked him in the eye. "Transmat onto the lead ship."

Tosh sat up, the glare from the monitor reflecting off her glasses and obscuring her eyes but he was sure she was staring at him, possibly in annoyance. What could he do? This is the longest he'd been inactive in years. "They're blocking the signal, even IF we had enough power to transmat that far into space."

Greg held out a hand. "This Earth HAS to have something for inter-solar system transport. We don't need anything defendable. We just need to get on board of one of their ships."

Jack put his hands on his hips, a tad annoyed with the young man's frustration. "No, we don't. The Torchwood that you worked for was what? Ten years, fifteen years into the future from here? In another universe? Look—I know what we have. I know our resources and limitations. I'll think of something."

Chin hitting his chest, Greg backed off. "Sorry. I'm just—how far are they off now?"

"Thirty minutes," Toshiko offered. "Give or take."

He began pacing again. "Great. So Violet's brains are going to be turned to jelly in about forty-five, but it doesn't matter because the Earth is going to be anally raped in about thirty two minutes. Shit."

Jack wagged a finger at him. "I know what you're problem is. You're too reliant on that TARDIS."

Folding his arms over his chest, Greg laughed bitterly. "Oh, I know better than to be reliant on FRED for anything."

Shaking his head, Jack looked the young man over. "You're used to just disappearing here and reappearing there and being in the thick of it with no steps in between. And quit worrying about Violet. You sound like a freakin' mother hen. She can take care of herself. I haven't let the Earth blow up yet, ad I'm not going to start now. Believe it or not, we've done just fine without Time Lord intervention thus far, and we'll be OK now. And they don't need us stupid humans, THEY are going to be fine. So lets just worry about the stuff we can do something about."

Thinking for a second, Jack snapped his fingers. "Tosh… I've got it. Tell them we want to send a liaison on board. Reiterate that in light of this 'blessed event,' we're offering a full pardon on the takeover thing, but we must insist that proper protocols for paying tribute be adhered to. Don't let on that we see their other ships. We're not supposed to be advanced enough for that." He looked back to the outsider, waiting to see if he had anything clever to say about that.

Without a response for Jack, Greg walked away. Crossing the footbridge, he opened the heavy metal door leading down to the subbasements. No one stopped him, so he didn't bother easing the door shut, he let it clack close behind him, then began clopping down the narrow steps in the dark.

XYZ

Gwen watched Rom gorge himself on the last of the biscuits slathered in something sickening and drippy and sweet, then lick his hands as she paced around the control column, mindful of the hole in the grate floor. She held Violet's mobile phone to her ear, other arm crossed over her chest in a guarded gesture as she attempted to pace while connected to the console with a bit of wire running from it to the phone. "Well, shit," she muttered into it.

"But Rose at least appears OK, for now?" Owen was asking her, obviously concerned.

It was kind of nice to see—Owen despised the Doctor and did his best to get on Rose's nerves every moment of every day, but he was concerned for her well-being, and the well-being of an unborn alien child who would no doubt grow up to torment Owen ceaselessly. Either Owen was developing a soul, or the situation was as dire as it sounded.

Discretely, Gwen tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, then watched Rom invest himself in the remainder of his sister's hot cocoa. "The baby's being active, and that seems to be causing her some discomfort. She seemed to be alright herself though. No way to tell the state of the baby, though."

She heard Owen let out an unhappy breath on the other end. "And the younger one is asleep you said." He let out a breath. "Great. I'd give it another half hour or so before you start seeing the effects on Roman. Who knows what's happening to the other one. Or the baby. Fucking brilliant Time Lords. You'd think they 'd have some kind of fail-safe for this."

Handing the boy a napkin, but knowing he wouldn't use it, she observed the methodical finger licking for a moment, then turned away, trying to make the conversation just a tad more private. "They did. It was called not letting the ships mate. What can we do?"

"Besides stopping it? And we're up to relying on the Doctor for that. The girl's a piece of work, but I don't think she knows shit about what's going on. Of course, I'd be surprised if the Doctor did, at this point. Otherwise he'd have known this was a possibility and wouldn't have let the other ship dock. Useless, all of them."

Gwen was glad to see that Owen had such a positive outlook. "We'll think of something." Oh she'd been throwing around banal, meaningless encouragements all day; mostly because there was so little for her to do. It was quiet behind her, so she turned around, looking for Rom. "I think I have an escapee. You work on the alien invasion thing, I'll see what I can do about…the rest of this." The rest of this. That was a nice way of putting it.

She made off after Rom, trying to hold the phone to her ear and search for the clomping sounds of the ungraceful eight year old making his way towards the medical bay.

XYZ

"Aww…shit."

Rose's head snapped up, and she glared at her son. "What did you just say?"

Without responding, Rom kicked his sister in the ribs. "Shit."

One hand on the wall, Rose struggled to her feet. "You know you're grounded when this is over." It wasn't even worth getting upset over at this point. He was obviously flustered, tired, hopped up and testing his eight year old little boundaries on top of that.

The boy shrugged. "If there is an all-over." There was something that Rose had never heard in the boy's voice before—resignation. "I can't talk to the ship, an' Violet had all the good ideas." Looking back through the doorway into the medical bay at the Doctor, then to the unconscious lump at his feet, his tired shoulders slumped downward in defeat, as thought he ought to just accept the inevitable.

Trying to calm her soon-to-be next born, Rose leaned against the redish-orange corridor wall and stroked her belly with both hands. His agitation was going to kill her if they didn't solve this soon. "Rom, sweetie, what does the Doctor say about negative thinking?"

Pressing his back against the wall, he folded his chubby arms across the blue shirt he was wearing, lips pressed together in a pout. "That negative thinking won't get me anywhere, 'sept sent to my room."

That wasn't exactly the lesson he was supposed to have gotten from it, but it'd do for now. "He was trying to tell me something, before he fell back asleep. Maybe we can figure out what he was trying to tell us to do." Closing her eyes, she drew in a deep breath, trying to will the baby into calming down. It was much worse now that Violet was on the casualty list. She didn't know how much more she could take. "This is just like any other problem, Roman. It's just like--" drawing in a sharp breath through her nose, Rose promptly forgot whatever it was that she'd meant to say in encouragement. To say the least, the baby wasn't taking this new turn of events well.

Kicking his sister one more time for good measure, the boy sighed. "My brain's gunna explode if they don't all stop. It's too much noise. It's too loud."

She wanted to think up something consoling to tell her son, some life-lesson about how the universe worked, and how they'd get out of this one the same as they'd gotten out of all the other predicaments they'd ever been in, but there was something about the look on Gwen's face as she approached, mobile phone still attached to her ear, that made Rose doubt it.

"We have some problems," the other woman confirmed, holding out the phone for Rose.

Even though she knew it would just be more bad news, she took it. Frantically her mind tried to dig back through the Doctor's ramblings, trying to trudge up just what he'd been saying that had been so important.

Owen was going on about chemical breakdowns and effects on Gallifreyan physiology, but before he could get to the inevitable portion where he explained just how bad the situation was, Rose let out a small whimpering moan, unable to hold it back any longer.

Pain was pain, and she had thus far delivered three children without the benefit of drugs—that wasn't the part that was so distressing. It was what she could imagine happening to the mind of the child within her…and the terrible mournful guilt she knew the TARDIS would feel after this was all over, should they not be able to stop this.

XYZ

They'd begun walking through the rooms of someone's mind. Sometimes it seemed to be the Doctor's, sometimes her own. It was rather easy to pick out the parts that belonged to Branden, they always involved a processed meat of some kind, or sweets. It was like a sausage and lollypop filled funhouse; it was rather frightening, truth be told.

When they got through another corridor of hotdogs on white bread inhabited by Captain Hook and teddy bears with swords, Violet breathed a sigh of relief to see bright fluorescent lights beyond. Nothing could be as bad as the smell of radiated, blistering processed meat.

At least, that's what she thought, until they crossed the threshold into the room with the grey lenolium floor, silver stainless steel autopsy tables and wall full of kennel-sized cages. Violet gasped, squeezing her brother's hand tighter.

When she saw the men with the cattle prodders coming toward her, she yanked the boy in the dress behind her. "When I say to, RUN." This memory was no place for a small child. Hell—she didn't even want to be there. This was the day the universe stopped being an adventure and started being hard work. This was the day anything resembling childish wonder for the universe had melted away, leaving only her duty as a lady of time to the universes to set things aright when necessary, an affection for Earth that extended only as far as her grandparents and Greg, and an abject fear of ever being in such a desperate position ever again.

And here she was.

The mind was a powerful thing—it held onto scents from childhood, images that escape the conscious mind in the flicker of an eye and names of places it had never fully known. She thought she'd buried this far enough away—but here it was. Past Branden's hotdog room and some weird memory of the Doctor calling himself Merlin in a body she'd never met or encountered.

It was here, and it was just as she remembered, when she let herself think of it. Smelling of antiseptic, vomit and something else, fluorescent lights glaring obscenely overhead, cages rattling, and men in white coats coming to see just what made her tick, and worse yet…trying to find out just how much she could endure.

And there they were—ready to haul her back toward that cage, as if she were no more than an animal. She had nowhere to run, they told her again. She was too weak to make it far—they'd seen to that. And if she insisted on attempting to escape again, the consequences would be even more dire than they were at that moment, if that was somehow possible.

By that point they'd already cut her opened twice, the first time utterly fascinated with the speed with which her body healed itself, in the right circumstances. The second they'd prodded her organs while she watched. That hadn't been the worst of the violations, or the last.

When she'd been spread on the table like a school science project, she'd heard screams from the next room, and she found it impossible to fathom what they were doing to the poor humanoid creature who'd wanted nothing more to do than drive a cab and eat a lot of ice cream, but she's found out—the moment they'd begun probing her mind in the most horrible violating manner possible.

This was, of course, after pumping her with so many drugs and doing other…violatory things she didn't wish to think of to break down her mental barriers. By the time their amateur psychic began rummaging around through her brain, it was like picking through piles of stuff a boot sale. Who the hell knew what secrets of Torchwood, or Time Lords those people had gotten.

It made it really difficult for her to be sorry that all of those bastards were dead. Greg and her grandfather were both extremely tight lipped on the subject, as to what had transpired after she and the others had been liberated, but she'd also never bothered to ask. She was sure that the incident had left blood on her lover's hands, and if he'd have wanted to talk about it, he would have.

She'd have thought that seven years was a long time to NOT talk about something—until it was staring her in the face again like this—bulky guards and angry, deranged scientists, each prepared to do her the maximum amount of bodily harm to ensure her partial cooperation.

When they were but a few feet away, Violet shoved Branden toward the door. "Go!" she ordered.

He tripped over that blasted dress, falling face forward in a puddle of crisp fabric and petticoats. Rolling onto his side, he got hands under himself, pushing up to a kneeling position then clamoring to his feet like a young man overly adept at scrambling about in women's period costuming.

"Go!" she urged him again as the first cattle prod connected with her chest, forcing her instantly to the ground. It took a few seconds, then the heat and pain surged through her, and she wasn't able to order the boy any further. But he still wasn't moving.

Didn't he know? They'd dissect him and violate every part of him, body mind and soul that there was to violate. If he knew, why was he standing there, like he was waiting for his chance. "I'm not going," the child explained patiently. "I don't have anywhere else to go."

She wanted to explain how ridiculous that was, but couldn't with all of the electricity running through her and unconsciousness tugging at her mind. Was it possible to fall asleep inside of a dream? What happened then?

She remembered what had happened the first time around—she'd woken up inside that room behind those grey metal doors. Woke up chained to a table, about to endure the thing that made her hate Earth more than she hated Daleks.

Mostly, she thought as the darkness pulled at her, she pitied Branden and what he would endure, all without understanding. He was too young for all of these games that grownups played, all for the sake of protecting their nations or whatever sad and lame excuse they gave to themselves or each other. Branden would know all of them soon—whatever the current rage happened to be.

Another shock and an instant after that thought, and all she knew was darkness.

TBC…


	9. Chapter 9

The Doctor had seen enough, but he didn't know how to stop it. He couldn't get back into his own head, it seemed, but he could very easily traipse through other people's, in his current state. Walking through someone else's' memories could be like walking through the rooms of a house. Right now, he was trapped in one of them, and he wasn't sure how to get out. There was nothing beyond this memory—just a white blankness that had closed around him (and his little partner in crime) the moment they'd stepped through this doorway.

He stood in the corner of a large bedroom with sage green walls. Light from a glowing orb-like ceramic bedside lamp reflected off the one window where the curtains were still cracked slightly open even though it was obviously night.

The bed was a queen sized four-poster, and looked like it had once been host to a canopy, but that had probably been deemed childish or too frilly at some point, and had been taken away. The furniture was new, as if that had also been recently replaced, possibly due toViolet's new tastes, or maybe to accommodate the room's new co-inhabitant. A familiar pewter urn sat in the corner of the room, near a bookshelf that held baubles he recognised as having been liberated from his own ship. He still wanted his sonic screwdriver back, by the way. He'd made a new one, but that wasn't the point. She'd made off with his favourite toy.

A figure thrashed in the bed, trying like hell to get away from the people on either side.

Jackie Tyler tried to shush Violet, but that seemed to only agitate her more. She looked across the bed at the balding man he recognised as a slightly older and more balding Pete in pyjama bottoms and an old white t-shirt, seeking some kind of answer or assistance.

Careful of the bandaged wrists, he grabbed Violet's arms, trying to hold her down, to keep her from doing herself more harm, while they continued to work on waking her—soothing words, harsh words, nudging, shaking. When Pete applied pressure to the girl's shoulders, pinning her to the bed, she began screaming—an ear-piercing shriek that went on and on, into forever.

"Violet, you're safe," Jackie told her repeatedly, brushing the girl's forehead with her hand, even while Pete attempted to pin her torso to the mattress. Beneath the button-down night shirt, the Doctor could see a large bandage that stopped at her collar bone. It looked like whoever'd hurt her had done a Y incision. Judging from the bruising everywhere that wasn't covered by the pale purple shirt or bandages they'd cut her open more than once. And knowing how difficult it was to anaesthetise a Gallifreyan, the odds were fairly high that she'd been awake and in agony through both procedures.

He shuddered at the thought of bone saws and seeing ones self cut open wide. No wonder Violet had been broadcasting her disdain and distrust for humanity since he'd fallen victim to the psychic pistol-whipping his ship had given him hours before.

Jackie made soothing, shushing noises, trying to somehow quiet the girl. "You're home, with your gran and granddad. No one's going to hurt you here."

Looking up at his wife, Peter Tyler shook his head in resignation. "She's like this every time she starts to wake up. We can't keep her sedated forever."

Rassilon—to have kept her sedated for any length of time must have taken a boatload of drugs. The Gallifreyan physiology could adapt very quickly to either clear out or work around foreign chemicals in the body.

Jackie's eyes narrowed as she pulled her heavy terry cloth dressing gown tighter around herself. Looking the girl over, she ran her thumb over a stitched up cut along Violet's neck that wasn't healing as quickly as it probably ought. "And they're all dead? The people who did this?"

Pete looked away, his attention suddenly fixating on the wicker basket of stuffed animals, which lay nearly forgotten next to the desk. "It wasn't just her, Jackie. They had others. Who knows how long they were running it? I don't--" he stopped, not daring to go further.

This seemed to be all the confirmation that the girl's grandmother needed. "Good." The Doctor had to concur. Of course, had he been there, it would have been more than just death that he'd have rained down upon them. Beside him, Branden covered his ears against his sister's frantic, piercing cries again, his eyes buried in the Doctor's trouser leg at the knee.

Slowly, Violets hoarse screams died down and each eruption grew weaker, until she was simply whimpering in her sleep. Pete let her shoulders go, but Jackie continued to make soothing passes at the girl's face with the back of her fingers. She was maybe nineteen there. So young and vulnerable looking at one moment, then quite old and embittered the next, when the screams erupted from her. "You have to do something for her."

Pete stood, hands sliding into his pockets. "I've called more specialists." His wife did not look impressed. "Jacks—it's all I can do. We don't know enough about her paternal heritage. I don't know if this is something specific to her kind. But the Torchwood psychics can't even get near her."

Ahh. The Doctor knew why he was here. Certainly it was a random memory, but it was serendipitous. A path out.

Reaching out, he took the boy's hand and squeezed it tight. "Alright Branden, I think I've figured out a way out of here, for one of us." He had no idea which one of them, but someone might be able to push through the thin veil created by the remembered psychic backlash of this encounter.

Jackie kissed her granddaughter's hand. "And where is that lump?"

Oh, so it wasn't him, the Doctor realised. Jackie just hated all males in the lives of her female relations.

Pete looked away uncomfortably, back towards the corner where the Doctor stood with Branden, but it was like they were characters in a Dickens novel—he looked right through them as if they weren't there (and they weren't—this was a memory long-passed). "Jacks, he's—just don't, ok?"

The Doctor really wished he wasn't seeing this. He'd seen far too much already, and if he'd have been there…

She'd chosen her own path, he had to remind himself. She'd chosen to stay behind in that universe. Granted, she'd chosen for him, and for her mother, but it was so long ago it hardly mattered.

"Don't what?" Violet's grandmother whispered harshly. "Don't get upset that he's not here? Where is he, Pete?"

Suddenly, Violet pushed her grandmother's hand away, almost knocking Jackie off the bed. Pete barely had a chance to grab the girl's arms before the screaming started again. "Greg's busy," he told his wife harshly between tortured cries. "I can't tell you why. Torchwood--"

Violet's eyes opened. The whites were bloodshot, but the normally pale irises were an electric purple.

Grabbing the small boy in drag next to him by the waist, the Doctor hauled him along before Branden could make a peep of surprise or protest. "I think this is our only chance, short-stuff," he announced calmly over a series of shrill screams he hoped to never hear again.

XYZ

Ianto Jones closed and locked another metal trunk of uncatalogued and unidentified alien 'stuff.' Nothing so far had met the parameters that Jack had given him regarding temporal lock breaking ability or psychic interference.

Dragging out another green painted steel chest, he turned the combination while trying not to breathe in the smell of must and death too deeply. It was impossible to keep everything clean. It didn't stop him from trying, of course.

Behind him, the heavy door creaked open on its hinge about a foot. The dark skinned man who looked like a fish out of water slid through. "Any luck?"

Nonchalantly turning back around, Ianto went back to his task. "No."

Standing next to him, the younger man looked down into the box for a moment, hands on his hips, then began rummaging through, tossing things over his shoulder that he deemed irrelevant. Even though it disrupted the order of his carefully controlled universe, Ianto chose to silently turn his back and open another unexplored footlocker. It helped him keep what was left of his sanity.

One spring, years ago, Jack had disappeared. Vanished right out of the hub, right from under Gwen's nose. No one knew what happened. It wasn't like they knew much about Jack to know where to start looking. All they could do was the standard investigation, which turned up nothing. Shortly thereafter, Jack reappeared, still not parting with much in the way of an explanation.

It wasn't too long after that before they met Rose. Jack had explained that Rose would be 'helping' for 'a few months' and that she had clearance for all of Torchwood's projects. And that was that. No more details, no more explanations. She did not go into the field—didn't seem to leave the office at all, for that matter, and seemed to know more than Owen and Tosh put together on certain aliens and pieces of technology.

Of course, it became rather evident after a few months just why Rose Tyler was not expected to pull her fair share in the field. Add to that how Jack smiled knowingly every time she entered the room, and how they shared weighty looks of depth that made everyone in the office talk about just what Jack's relationship to Rose Tyler could be. Especially in those rare instances where anyone caught him being overly familiar with the woman, a hand on her hip, a tongue down the throat (which he usually managed to refrain from doing with the rest of Torchwood's staff).

It didn't help that the only Rose Tyler that Owen could find on record had died a few years' prior at Canary Wharf. Ianto had thought he'd seen her there, or someone very similar. Her hair was darker and she was about ten or fifteen years older. Another mystery, courtesy of Jack Harkness.

It wasn't until Roman Carpathia Tyler was born (horrible name for a child, that), that the rest of Torchwood began to understand just where Rose was coming from. Even then they met the wiry man with the brown plastic glasses and the bushy wild hair only once, when he'd come to help Rose 'collect her things.' He'd thanked everyone for looking after his 'companion,' whatever that was supposed to mean, and explained that they'd be off.

It hadn't lasted long—a few months later, they'd found out not only what had happened to Torchwood Four, but just how dangerous and alien the man in the pinstriped suit could be when there was an attempt to take the baby from Rose one night in the dead of winter.

A few months later, Roman was mysteriously a toddler, and Rose again on the Torchwood payroll. It was around then that Jack finally came clean with the time travel.

To this point, Ianto had yet to be impressed by the whole lot of them. Currently, he was doing his duty by Jack, who seemed to behave as some sort of uncle figure to the boys. It kept him away from any potential interaction with the holy terrors, and left him rather removed from the situation, which was just fine. He was a tad protective of Jack, and an unusual and odd feeling of possessiveness came over him whenever the Doctor was around, as if he expected the alien to swan off with his team's leader again.

The young man, Greg if he remembered correctly, sighed, paused in his digging, then began messing about with something he'd picked out of the bunch, not bothering to say a word to Ianto.

He hated that someone was tearing through the solitude he'd built for himself down here. The only comfort he was able to take was that his companion seemed about as eager for conversation as he was.

"Huh," the young man huffed as Ianto went to crack open another box. So much for the sounds of silence.

Turning around, Ianto didn't say anything still. Greg was turning something clunky and metallic and the size of a basketball over in his hands curiously. "Molecular destabiliser."

"Useful?"

The dark-skinned man looked up, as if he'd noticed Ianto for the first time. "Very. In context." He smiled grimly. "If we can find a way to unscramble the Transmat signal. Three invader ships," he snapped his fingers. "Jam and space dust."

That caused Ianto to pause. Just something about the way the other man said it. Something very…cold and factual, that he could identify with. The interloper might be wearing a jumper that looked like it had been knitted by his dear old granny for Christmas, but he'd been around the block a bit. It might explain the way Jack looked at him. Or Jack might just be batting his eyes at another pretty face. It was tough to tell—Jack was Jack, after all. "I take it the negotiations are not going well."

And there it was again—the way his face froze. "If you can call it that."

"I thought Jack wanted to try to talk his way out of it." The less attention they drew, the better. Diplomacy was usually better for that than shooting lasers into the sky. Of course with this crew, you never knew.

Kicking the case Ianto had just opened, the other man crouched and began digging through it, ignoring that anything had been said. "I spent some time with another Torchwood. In…well…it's not important. Another place. We did things a bit differently there. You could say we were bookends compared to this organisation." He picked up something small and red and shoved it in his pocket before going back to his search. "We had a more public side. Negotiations, treaties, media coverage, the whole bit. Then we had the more…secretive side."

A single laughing breath filled the silence between them. "More secretive than us? We're in an old tube tunnel for a rail network that never existed. As far as anyone knows."

Biting the top off of something hand-held and round, Gregory Sheel Patel looked Ianto in the eye. "Lets put it this way, I lived with the head of Torchwood for three and a half years and HE didn't know half of what my team did. Which is good. It really would have ruined his run for the presidency if he knew what happened to the thirty-seven Eastern Block scientists who liked doing experiments on innocent aliens."

And with that, the young man stormed off. Ianto knew he needed to get back up to the hub, if nothing other than to warn Jack. The subtext of that whole conversation had been rather clear—the quiet kid didn't like how Jack was running things, and if the head of Torchwood Three wasn't going to answer the aliens to his satisfaction, the lanky, nerdy Indian was going to take matters into his own hands.

It was the words "molecular destabiliser" that made Ianto worry. It was a device that surely couldn't be good for diplomacy, and if the young man did anything too hastily, he could only end up bringing more troops and more attention to Earth. He might save them from the immediate threat only to bring something more powerful and deadly down upon their heads.

Taking a separate set of steps back up to the Hub, Ianto shook his head sadly. In light of the young man's hinted-at past actions, it was possible Greg would start a war. Sure it was to save the Earth. But really—it was for her. He could understand it. But he didn't agree with it. He knew what it was to do something that…what was the word? Large. Committed. Insane, possibly. For someone you loved.

That didn't mean he was going to let it happen.

TBC…


	10. Chapter 10

Rom smacked his brother in the back of the head. "Shuddup about hotdogs, will ya? I need ta know the rest of the formula."

Rose grabbed the older boy's hand, restraining him from whacking again. "Roman—you're in trouble when this is all over. Branden, we'll get you something to eat in a minute. What else did the Doctor say about accessing the tunnels?"

She leaned against the hatch door that they couldn't get through, letting out a tired breath. Gwen mercifully took Rom's hand, so she didn't have to worry about restraining her eight year old.

The scrawny little one huffed and scratched his cheek, looking very much like a blonde, miniature version of the Doctor. "Uh, three X seven squared, but I don't know what X is. Three X five. Three X thirteen and…oh yeah, seven. Equals the pulse ratio of the locking mechanism. Er sumthin' er other. Gotta solve for X. Anyways. SO, there's, like, a fifth tunnel that goes, like, down to the nerve clusters."

Rose nodded, finally understanding what the Doctor had been trying to say earlier. "And then we force a physical dump of the other ship. Just solve for X and toss the cargo rooms. Just like that—everything solved." She rubbed her bulge; half-glad she wasn't trying to manage this crisis with an infant in arms, but wondering if it'd be easier to think clearly without an agitated pre-born trying to fight his way out.

Kids. Their whole purpose was to torture parents. The Doctor's theory was that they were so adorable with their big heads and tiny limbs so you didn't kill them for doing the things kids did. Of course the Doctor had also sent a four year old to do his job, so it wasn't like her companion was getting many points in that department.

Even though the Doctor being free and able to help would have been the quickest solution to the problem, she wasn't sorry Branden was awake. The boy didn't need to see those things he'd described. The universe could be a very ugly place indeed, and the Doctor and Violet had both seen a good share of it. The Doctor, moreso, but it seemed that the last decade had not been uneventful for her daughter.

It made Rose regret that they had lost contact. It had been a long time for her, far longer than it had been for Violet. Twenty-four years, in fact, to her daughter's ten. Could she have said anything over those ten years, to make it go easier for her child? Any sort of wisdom or comfort she could have provided, even long distance, to make the universe seem like a less cruel place?

Well, at least she'd had her grandparents. Jackie had been the best mother in the world, and Rose was sure she could trust her mum not to let Violet get away with anything. Pete had also proved himself in the parenting department. While she regretted not being there, she knew her daughter wasn't entirely abandoned in another universe to figure out the trials and tribulations of early adulthood on her own. That was one thing—she didn't miss that time in her life when everything seemed so uncertain, and it seemed like she was reinventing herself on a near-daily basis. Hopefully her daughter had faired better in that respect. Hopefully she'd get a chance to ask her, when this was all over.

Rose smiled and tried to wave off Gwen's concerned glances as she tried to regain her footing. Taking in a few steadying breaths, Rose stood up straight and turned back toward the hatch they were struggling with. They needed to get on with this. Before Owen's fears for her children came to pass. The man was a pig, but she'd heard the breathy certainty in his voice when he was explaining the potential neurological damage due to continued exposure to the psychic fields generated by mating TARDISes. "Lets get this thing open before anything else happens," she told her entourage, gesturing for Gwen to help her with the rusted handle again.

Why couldn't anything ever be normal? Not too normal—that was taking the bus to a job where she folded shirts all day and trying to avoid the dirty old letch up in men's suits. She didn't want normal-normal. She just wanted to eat a meal with her family—her entire family—without something strange and alien and universe-shattering happening.

Some day.

Maybe.

XYZ

Violet's hand instantly went for her head and she moaned, trying to roll onto her side. A hand held her on her back, on some hard surface. "Easy. It's going to hurt for a bit. I had to do something…a bit on the rotten side."

Without thinking, her hand dug into the fabric of the Doctor's jacket, fingers twisting comfortingly around the material. "Ung?"

His hand slid under her neck and he let her sit up a little. "Hadta use the psychic energy from your flashback to break through the field the TARDIS is generating to get Branden out of here. All of the excess energy got funneled back into your consciousness. Sorry."

Blinking her eyes, Violet tried to focus on him, but it was all a terrible blur. It was bright and he was simply a dark blob in her line of sight. "Where's Greg? He was mad--" She was so used to being able to feel him, to at least glean his higher emotions at a distance. It was like having a hand to hold, even in her mind.

Sighing, the Doctor, still crouching beside her, helped her to a sitting position, then pulled her eyelids back, giving her the once-over. "We're still stuck in here. Greg's with Jack, so he's fine. You're the one I'm worried about."

Shifting uncomfortably, Violet tried to pull away, but he kept a tight grip on her upper arm. "I'm fine. Other than having someone's consciousness funneled through my brain, that is. That little kid's weird. I think I'm going to have nightmares forever about his sweet little dreams of pirates and processed meats."

With just one finger, he turned her head toward him, the same way he used to when she was small. "Vi, I saw what made you leave Earth. And I think we need to talk about it."

Eyes finally focusing, she blinked a few times, looking around at the sterile, entirely white room. "It's not important. It was a long time ago. And we have other things to worry about. We can talk about my tortured disappointment with my mother's people when we're out of this mess." She pressed her lips together with a touch of finality, seeming to be saying 'and not a minute before.'

Sighing, the Doctor shook his head. "The avoidance thing was cute. When you were eleven. Not so much in your mid-twenties."

Violet's eyes narrowed as she slid her hands under herself, trying to get enough balance to get to her feet. "It's over and done with."

She was about half-way up when the dizziness overcame her and the Doctor had to grab both of her arms to keep her from going down. "Does he know what they did to you?"

Her nose flared with anger and she tried to turn away, but he wouldn't let her. "He was there. He saved me. He knows."

"All of it?"

Eyes meeting his, Violet's lips curled. It was somewhere between a painful snarl and an ironic frown. "It isn't any of his business." There were things that she didn't tell him. But there were things that he didn't tell her. Sometimes, it was better that way. She suspected it was how both of them lived with themselves on occasion.

His cool hand came to rest on her neck. There was something reassuring and right about that feeling. "Oh Vi. Don't pick up my worst habits."

Putting her hand over his, she partook of the comfort he was offering, despite the uncomfortable nature of their conversation. "I don't lick the console." Closing her eyes she remembered all of the hugs she'd ever received before bedtime, that last squeeze before bed that told her everything was going to be alright, despite the trials of the day. Too bad she was too old for such things. "Look—we're happy. It's fine. Everything's fine. I've had a wander in your head. Don't act like you tell mum everything that happens on a daily basis."

The Doctor's thumb brushed her cheek. "Vi—that's different, and you know it. Listen to me—I know you two are happy together. Any idiot can see that. But YOU aren't happy. I know that feeling. It's not a good one."

Violet began looking around the room for a door. There didn't seem to be one. "It's not your business. I'm not picking apart your life just because I've seen inside your head. Maybe I should tell mum that you figured out Gallifreyan reproductive cycles years before you admitted you did, because you just didn't think you could handle it. Fifteen years is an awful long time to travel with someone, knowing what she wanted, and to just let her keep thinking you had no idea how I happened."

She was hoping that would shut him up. Sadly, she was mistaken. "Would it make you feel better if I came clean about that with her? Because believe me—you're carrying around something far worse, for no reason at all. He loves you. I don't know what you think--"

Her chest shuddering with repressed tears, she spun around, pointing a finger in his face. "Like he doesn't keep things from me? There are things I just don't ask him, because I don't want the answer. It's mutual. He doesn't want to know what else happened to me, there. It would just upset him."

"Or it would have upset you," the Doctor pointed out calmly.

Face twisting in anger, she turned her back upon him again, not knowing what would come out of her mouth if she kept looking him in the eye. "I should have been able to stop it," she said coldly. "And I won't tell him that. Ever." Drawing in a few deep breaths, she managed to steady herself. "Now that you've dredged up something I'd really rather not have relived, can we get the hell out of here? Please?"

Folding his arms across his chest, the Doctor remained impassive. She despised him his calmness when she'd come so very close to falling apart just now. "Branden's on the job. We should be out of here in no time at all."

He said it too casually, though. Of course—considering the ridiculousness of the statement, they were leaving it up to a four year old to make sure their brains weren't fried and they eventually made it back to their own minds and memories, instead of wandering through his funhouse of projected forgotten thoughts.

Great, she thought. They were doomed.

XYZ

Jack was right about one thing, Greg decided as he bounded up two flights of cement steps. He was too reliant on the TARDIS. Yes, he lacked patience with these types of situations where he couldn't DO something. Or wasn't being allowed to do something. He hated the feeling of incapacitation.

He slowed on the dark, slightly slimy cement steps, wondering what had become of his life. Once upon a time, he'd been thrilled to death and had been feeling quite grown-up that his parents had let him go backpacking for two weeks before the start of his first year of university. He hadn't seen his mother or father since he stepped out of the house that day, bag in hand and his mother's magenta lipstick smeared on his cheek. His father had slipped him an extra twenty, in addition to the money he'd saved for the previous year for the trip, and that had been that.

A missed train, a collision with an alien that looked like a cross between a viper and a pig, and a narrow escape aided by two quirky yet pleasant humanoids later, and he was saying yes to gallivanting across time and space for a year with them.

Somewhere along the way he'd grown attached to the younger of the two, a temperamental hormonal beast of a girl who was convinced that she was right and everyone else, including the Doctor, was wrong. He'd given up his family for her on the spur of the moment, following only the aching in his chest and the pain in his loins that told him he'd regret it forever if he chose the safe and pre-determined path that his life was supposed to follow. Better to regret something you've done than something you've not.

It had been a long eleven years since that day on the train platform, waiting for something that'd never happen.

A year with the Doctor and Violet, ten years in a separate universe, three and a half with her family and another seven just out there, continually looking for some place that wasn't home to be home-like. Some place for them both to forget the thing that had made them leave Earth, just as soon as she was healthy enough to talk to the TARDIS again.

They'd had a long decade. He was tired of it all, really. That was true. He loved travelling. He loved travelling with her. They still laughed and ran and did all of those things that they did. He didn't have a problem, per se with the whole getting into the thick of things part that came into being with Violet. It was just…she was doing those things out of duty now days. Her duty as a Time Lady to keep reality in one piece, constantly following up on errant time streams, slips in the fabric of reality, those sorts of things. Not because adventure appealed to her in any sort of way any more. It made him tired.

He hated doing stuff, too. Well, doing it without her. It made him seem pretty lame (perhaps more than seem) but this was his life. He hated talking to people; he hated dealing with them lately. He was hating the constant problems and jeopardy.

It wasn't because he was bored, or anything like that. Mickey had eventually just gotten tired of the hassle and opened a bar on a beach where he had nothing to do all day but look at white sand and scantily clad pretty girls and exotic sunsets. Not a bad life—they visited when Greg could drag her back to Earth and a place that wasn't her grandmother's house. Mostly he'd play the 'we nearly froze to death on that last trip, and I need to warm up' card. There were worse things in life than sitting in the sun drinking booze and trading tall tales that just so happened to be true.

Violet would always sit there with a drink in her hand, never actually touching it, sitting sideways on the stool, looking out at the sand while pretending like she was listening.

Basically, Greg was tired on Violet's behalf. And if they all lived through this without her brains being turned to mush and the world not ending, he wanted to stay home for a little while.

He grabbed the railing as he spun around to the next landing. Half a flight above him, the door opened and Jack blocked his path. "I don't know what you're planning, but you can't do it."

Greg grimaced. He thought of all people, Jack should understand him. "I have to do something."

Jack folded his arms over his chest. "We aren't out of options."

Greg stopped a few steps from the top. "But we are out of time."

He heard the gun before he saw it—Jack was just that good. The thing was cocked before it was even pointed at him. "Here's how it's going to go—my way, or nothing at all."

Pulling himself up onto the next step, Greg fearlessly closed the distance between them just a tad more. "And your way IS nothing at all. So far I haven't seen much." He genuinely liked Jack, he really did. That's what made this suck so damned bad. "Look, I just want this over-with."

"And just what the hell do you think I want?" Jack stepped forward, to the very edge of the first step. There was no way in hell he'd miss if he fired now. "You're not going to mess this up by jumping the gun."

A bitter laugh erupted from the younger man. "I'd point out the irony of that statement, but it'd be a waste of oxygen. I have no way up there anyway. You'd probably have me gunned down or restrained before I could use your rift converter to transmat myself up there. Tell me, what've you got? Then I'll tell you if I am serious or not."

Jack actually lowered the gun with that. "You know, I kind of miss the kid who was at least apologetic about killing me." Sliding the thing into his holster, Jack took a step backward. "Does she know what you've done?"

Greg took the remaining few steps two at a time, then walked past Jack without an explanation.

Following through the double doors, Jack grabbed his arm. "Seriously."

The young man looked at the hand on his sleeve, then pulled away. "She doesn't need to know."

The look Jack gave asked if he really thought that.

Catching Owen's eye, Greg wound around a railing and made his way up a catwalk toward Toshiko's workstation. "I do this stuff so that she doesn't have to." She'd live so long, and he'd live so little—it was better that for the time they were together, he did these things. It meant there were a few less blemishes and stains of guilt upon her soul. He'd carry it for a finite period. She'd carry it forever. "What're we doing?" he asked loudly.

Owen leaned against the railing, looking down at both of them as they approached. "Well, while you two have been figurin' out who's dick is longer, I've got them to grant access for one Torchwood liaison. It's probably a trap, but they need to keep us pacified until their entire invasion force is in place. So, there ya have it."

The young man held up the device he'd been holding. "Four hundred metres of pure molecular destabilisation-y goodness."

Jack pushed the hand away. "No. It's not enough to destroy the entire fleet. We kill the four in the system, the hundred waiting just outside the system swarm in. Look, I learned how to talk from the best. Let me have a crack at handling this semi-peacefully."

Greg nodded. "You're right. Not my Earth. Any more. Not my call. Do you really think you can solve it?"

Nodding, Jack gave the young man a taught smile. "If I can get up there, I can have a chance. No use saving the Earth now only to have it blown up in another two hours in retaliation, right?"

Toshiko spun around in her chair. "Transmatting in five, four, three, two…"

On instinct alone, Greg flung himself forward, wrapping Jack in a bear hug.

Everything felt cold, then hot and he felt like he was being torn apart from the inside, out, and then they materialised in a ship very similar to the one they'd already been on earlier in the day.

Once their bodies stabilised, Jack shoved him backward. "What the hell are you thinking?" the older man hissed.

Before Greg could explain himself, he heard a hollow growl behind them. "We said one liaison, not two. What sort of treachery is this?"

Slowly raising his hands in the universal gesture for surrender, Jack frowned at the other man. "Remind me, when this is over, to kill you."

TBC…


	11. Chapter 11

Scratching the back of his neck, Owen sighed, watching the charged air where Jack was just standing start to settle. "See. Knew the kid was a spaz."

Toshiko pushed up her thick rimmed glasses and tugged down the sleeves on her light pink jumper. "Jack trusts him."

Owen slapped a rolled-up bundle of papers on the desktop. "Jack trusts the Doctor. That doesn't say much. And you all accuse me of getting lead around by my dick."

Unrolling the tight bundle, Toshiko mentally cursed Owen's fascination with paper as she skimmed the highlighted portions of the readouts. "Just let it rest. Unless you plan on starting a mutiny, Jack's our leader and that means we have to deal with the TARDIS contingency and all the problems that go with. And if you are going to mutiny, just let it go until AFTER we're no longer being invaded." Putting the abused papers down, she kept her finger on one set of numbers in particular. With her other hand, she began pecking away at one of her keyboards. "These readings either aren't right, or something else is happening."

Folding his arms over his lab coat, Owen made a face. "I'm not going to mutiny. But I can bitch about it all I like." He squinted at the data his coworker was collating. "Yeah, I thought that's what that was doing. Course, this information does us no good—we can't stop what's happening in the ship, and all this does is tell them how much worse it can get."

XYZ

Violet sat on a park bench on the side of a small path, watching her mother and the Doctor. They were across from her, seated on a brick retaining wall, their heads close together while they were talking. It was a sunny day, the green leaves rustled overhead, causing warm yellow rays to peek through the canopy now and again.

Her mother was rolling her eyes over something, and the Doctor grinned, sliding an arm around her waist. His hand rested long her side, and they sat for a while in silence, drinking the contents of fast food cups, pointing in amusement as little animals scurried by.

"When's the last time you did that?" a voice asked from behind the bench's sole occupant.

A previous incarnation of the Doctor sat down beside her. "You know I hate that version of you," she told the figure. "And none of your business. Mum doesn't bug me about this."

The Doctor with the short hair, annoying voice and comical ears folded his arms over his chest, watching the couple sitting on the retaining wall, happy and as oblivious as a memory should be. "This me wasn't very fond of the old you either."

Across the small path, her mother shook her cup, sloshing the ice around, then hopped off the wall. She took the Doctor's cup from him and walked to the black trash receptacle about ten feet off. "Well, I'm just going to have to stay here. It happens."

Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his brown trench coat, the Doctor looked down at his shoes. "That's just…" he sighed. "I guess its picket fences and all that. House with carpets." He shuddered, as if the idea was repulsive, but there was some part of the gesture Violet wasn't so sure about.

Her mother rolled her eyes again. "We could get a flat with hardwood floors—no carpets, no fences, no gardens. But really. It's not like we're joined at the hip you know." She raised a finger, cutting off the Doctor's potential snide remark. "Just shut it."

Seeing that his companion was not going to sit back down the Doctor stood, still awfully interested in his shoes. "What? I'm saying I'm going to do all of the stupid Earth things that come along with this package, and you're mocking me."

Violet's mother kicked his shoe with her own. "I'm not mocking you. I'm proud of your offer to sit still for five minutes. Really. I am."

Next to Violet on the bench, the other Doctor shifted uncomfortably as Rose ruffled her Doctor's hair. "I forgot about that."

Her mother slid her hand into his, and Violet once again wondered what the point of this exercise was. They should be trying to get out of here. They should be trying to stop their respective ships from doing the rumpy pumpy. Not trying to persuade Violet that people weren't all bad.

The pair walked for a moment, only taking a few steps before the Doctor stopped and turned to his companion, standing very intimately close, his lips hovering over her hairline. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to get rid of me, Rose Tyler."

"Yeah. That's it. Left my mum and my kid in another universe so that I could run off with Captain Jack, I did." She couldn't see her mother's face, but she could hear the eyes rolling around like marbles, practically.

The Doctor rested his lips on top of her head for a moment. "Knew it," he muttered. "It's the dinosaur. All I can offer is all of time and space. He has one lousy pterodactyl hanging around his secret base, and suddenly it's goodbye, Doctor, hello Captain Jack!" He chuckled. "So you're going to take him up on his offer?"

No—really. Violet wanted to know the point. Why was she being subjected to this now? They had other things to worry about—real-world things. The effects of the ship were becoming stronger. That was evident with how intense and real these little mind-jaunts were becoming. She could feel the sunlight warming her shoulder where it fell and smell the humidity on the grass. And she was saddled with this other Doctor, this figment that wasn't even part of this memory; he only appeared to be here to torment her.

Her mother shrugged. "Might as well. It'll be something different for a little while. If you want to hang around Torchwood, you're welcome to, but I'm not going to chain you down." Turning a bit, she began dragging him away, right past Violet and the other Doctor. "Seriously. I'll be fine. Which isn't to say that you can't visit, or whatever. I'd be miffed if you didn't."

Something about her was as pleased as a small child at Christmas to see her mother and the Doctor so…warm and personal. Another part of her wanted to scream and throw things at him. The TARDIS was going to fry their brains to nothingness, but everything'd be well if the Doctor just made his point about her life and choices.

Clasped hands swinging between them, the Doctor sighed dramatically. "Yes, yes. Rose Tyler's addicted to cuddles. We know, we know. But you'll have Jack for that…" He prattled on as they walked away, hand-in-hand.

Watching them walk over the slight rise in the path and down toward a grove of flowers she couldn't readily identify, Violet eventually turned back to the leather-clad Doctor with the self-satisfied smile on his face. "And the point of that touching bit of domesticity?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I was just thinking about it. Got us out of the white room, didn't it?"

The leaves rustled overhead as Violet stood. For the first time, she looked behind her, at the rolling hill lined with tombstones. Leave it to her mother and the Doctor to have a mushy, touching conversation about their future in a cemetery. Pretty backdrop—despite all that death, she supposed. "I want to get out of here. I think I hate your head as much as I hate mine."

"Why did you come back?"

She'd been expecting some snide response to that comment—especially from this Doctor. He'd been nothing BUT snide remarks during their one encounter, which had been far too long for Violet. "Because the Void opened up. Because I could. And Greg deserves to see his family."

Sitting back against the hard wood bench, the Doctor nodded. "And not because you're going to leave him here."

Turning on the bench to face him, she almost slapped him across the face, but thought better of it. "NO! Why the hell would I do something like that?"

But he just stared at her, looking down his prodigious nose, as though he had seen into her heart and was waiting for her to deny it further. "Because he makes you happy."

Coldly, she looked back to the path, no longer interested in the conversation. "Well, that's a stupid reason. Might be your reason for doing the stupid things you do, but it's not mine."

"But you were going to do it. So what's your reason?" His tone was so calm, so quiet. Nothing smug there—even if she could sense his satisfaction at walking her right into an admission.

So much for having outgrown him. He still knew her too well. Even this old him, that she hated so dearly. "I don't know. It wasn't forever. Maybe…take mum to see gran. Then…once he's settled everything with his family, then come back for him. We're not joined at the hip, you know. Mum leaves you all the time."

When she noticed that he was studying her, possibly reading her body language, she forced herself to unfold her arms. He kept staring, though. "And maybe take a century or two to get back. That's what you've been doing with your grandmother, haven't you? And Jackie hasn't caught on."

Why was she being grilled like this? Why was every portion of her life suddenly under a microscope? It wasn't like the Doctor was so emotionally intelligent that he had any sort of right to question her actions or motives. "I visit every Sunday, her time. Might be a month, might be a year for me. I'm sure she notices. She just doesn't say anything."

He didn't flinch or waver from his assault on her motives, he simply ploughed straght on ahead. "Because she's afraid you won't come back, if she does. Probably afraid she's already lost you." There was something sad in those normally cold-looking blue eyes of his. It made Violet wonder if she looked as unapproachable as this Doctor's self. "You have a chance to not make the mistakes I've made. To escape that."

Before she could stop herself, her arms were folded defensively across her chest again. "I thought I told you—they're my mistakes to make. Go make your own." Her jaw clenched and unclenched for a moment as a small brown bird picked at a worm in the moist grass at her feet. "And what the hell do you know? Mum hasn't aged a day since the last time I saw her. Right now I just look like an impressionable nineteen year old hanging out with a dirty twenty-nine year old. In a couple of years? Or ten more? Or fifteen?"

There was an almost surprising lack of empathy in this Doctor's face. "There's something else. You know something, or you saw something, and you're determined to drag out the remainder of your time together."

Violet stood up, looking for some way out of the empty recording of someone elses' memory. "I'm not talking about this. I'm getting out of here. You can criticize me and how I live my life later. I'm tired of this. I'm tired of you getting in my head and acting like you know me, then thinking I should—should listen to you. You! As if you haven't…never mind. Just. Never mind." She swatted his hand away when he reached for her arm. Whether it was to comfort her, or stop her from bolting down the path, she didn't know.

"I used to know you!" he called after her, but didn't follow.

XYZ

Purpley-green aliens with tentacles for hair were not how Jack wanted to go. Somehow, he thought he could even resist the urge to shag 'em. Mostly it was the angry look in their eyes.

That being said—they were ugly looking, and a tiny bit incompetent-looking. If someone could have that look about them.


	12. Chapter 12

When this was over and done with, Violet vowed to never talk to the Doctor. Any incarnation of him. Ever again. She was now trapped in an old innocent Torchwood memory with the version of the Doctor that fancied himself Merlin (which was the biggest stack of crap she'd ever heard—what kind of jerk stacks British mythology in his own favour?). He was just leaning against a cubicle wall, hands folded pleasantly in front of himself, stupid umbrella with the bright red handle hooked upon his arm.

"Lets see what the princess has to say about this," Todd chuckled somewhere in the distance.

Violet didn't turn. She froze in her chair, staring at the numbers on her computer screen. This whole thing would have gone a lot quicker if her grandfather had let her install the correct language support on her work computers. But there was that whole part where she was supposed to be just a normal human thing that prevented her from just running all the rift computations in Gallifreyan.

A hand-held device was shoved in her face and twisted around, two inches from her eyes. "What is it?"

Grabbing the small screen from Todd, she held it far enough away that she could actually see what it was. "Coordinates. Takeaway restaurant in the Belmos system," she grumbled before she thought better of it.

Todd looked like Carrottop, only with strawberry blotches running from his cheek to his neck. He was gross and thought he was god's gift to science. Hence he was now looking down his nose at her. "Yeah, right."

Pointing to the four numbers, she sighed. "Spatial coordinates. Latitude, longitude, depth, solar system of reference. You probably spent a week working on those numbers, didn't you?"

There was a chorus of laughter from behind her and she turned, grinning at her accomplices. She could always count on Greg to be on her side. Well, he'd better, or else. Amanda and Chris just knew she was the safer bet in these office battles of 'what the hell is it' and Zita seemed to actually enjoy spending time in her presence.

She turned to her entourage when Todd stormed off, taking the PDA with him. "Hey, he asked," she explained.

Sometimes she hated sitting on the main floor. Granted her cubicle was the size of a corner office, but she would have liked some privacy. Then she wouldn't have to deal with people like Todd, and she could just patch in to her TARDIS for some of these calculations. They'd be done a hell of a lot faster.

But it had been her grandfather's idea—putting her in the open to be used as a resource.

It was why she was out the door at the first sign of trouble, in hot pursuit of it. Office life would kill her, and she was only seventeen.

"Here he comes again," Zita whispered when she'd turned back to her numbers.

A second later a rusty piece of metal on creaking hinge came swinging over her cubicle wall. "Oh wow. Haven't seen one of these in ages, not that I'm sorry for it. Where'd they find this?"

"Bottom of the river," Todd ground out. "What is it, Miss I've-Seen-Everything?"

Violet shrugged smugly. If he wanted to play it like that, she could play it like that. The twat had been getting progressively worse since the report came back on how she'd solved the problem with the Sdis, and she'd had enough. "Part of a Harvester Droid. Intergalactic antique acquisition. Only they like brains in jars."

A mobile phone rang and Zita answered, wandering away, leaving her with a red-faced Todd.

She stared at him for a moment, wondering what the hell else he could want. Getting up, she walked around the side of the cubicle. Arms folded across her chest, she tried to give the impression that he'd better not bother her again. "Anything else I can help you with?"

His eyes narrowed. "You might have favoured status around here, but you don't have me fooled. Your mother never did, either."

Ahh. Part of the old regime. She thought her grandfather had gotten rid of the worst of that lot? Well, from that perspective, Todd wouldn't fit the bill. He was annoying but harmless. "Whatever. I'm here to do a job. You wanted to know what it was, I told you. You don't like it, take it up with Pete Tyler." She never referred to him as her grandfather at Torchwood. She didn't need to remind people that she ate her cornflakes at the same table as the man on top every morning. They had a hard enough time with a minor doing the things she did here.

And Todd wasn't leaving. It figured. "I reckon you're going to eventually come up against something you don't know anything about, and then we'll see just how much good having all the old files memorised does you."

So he thought her grandfather had read her old Torchwood files like bedtime stories, and that's how she knew what she knew? Well, good for him. "Don't worry about me, I can handle myself, thanks. And it's gonna be a while before we run out of stuff I can handle."

He leaned in, something vicious in his pale grey eyes. "Oh yeah, that's right. That mysterious dad of yours. Your mum just up and hands him custody one day, then the Daleks nearly invade, she disappears, and here you are. Not even an adult, dumped on your grandparents like your mother doesn't even care. So just what sort of little adventures did you have with him? That even qualify you to be here?"

This was about the last mission. She'd ditched the team and had destroyed the alien threat with thirteen pounds of butter and an electrical charge. He was mad that she'd decided she knew what was best for everyone and had left them behind…again. She did that a lot, lately. It was quicker and easier that way, sometimes. There were just less explanations. Either Greg came with, or he ran interference. And Todd had apparently had enough of being left behind.

Her eyes narrowed and a malicious grin pulled back upon her lips. "I'm sorry, my childhood's classified and your clearance isn't high enough."

Finally managing to take control of the memory (they were getting thicker, heavier and less pliable as the situation wore on) she glared at the Doctor. "What are we doing here?"

He had that calmness about him that she just despised. The one that would not be upset by her ire, right now when she wanted a confrontation. "Did it ever occur to you that this whole psychic backlash started because of you?"

Everything grew dim and blue, like twilight. The air was moist and metallic tasting, like the air during a thunderstorm. It stung in her nose as everything changed, like the stage being reset during a blackout.

Ok, she hated the northern leather-clad Doctor. He'd been a complete jerk to her in the two days of their acquaintance and implied she was everything from incompetent to a TARDIS thief (rich, considering the source). This Scottish fellow was about two steps away from getting set on fire, with that smug look on his face—the manipulating bastard was up to something.

XYZ

Branden groped for his brother's hand in the dark and sighed. "This is a dumb adventure."

A second later, Rom's hand clasped over Branden Tyler's, gripping it tightly. "Most of them are. This is reason…" he thought about it. "What're we on? Sixty-four? Sixty-four--why Captain Jack is way better than the Doctor." His free hand fumbled around for the generator switch again. "No psychic stupidness, firstly, and he's got a dinosaur, and even when the power goes out in the hub, the emergency lights go on there. Unlike the dumb TARDIS."

His hand hit the lever, finally coming across it. "Don't see why we can't live with Captain Jack. Him bein' way better than the Doctor. Then we'd get ta stay with mum more."

"Yeah!" Brandenberg chimed in. "An' dinosaurs and ninjas and stuff!"

Pushing up on the lever to no effect, Rom cursed his shortness, his lack of leverage, and a bunch of other things. "Captain Jack doesn't have ninjas."

"Captain Jack IS a ninja!" the younger boy explained reverently. "And he's Batman."

Rom wriggled his hand out of his brother's grasp then jumped up, grabbing hold of the lever, hanging on to it with all his weight, under the theory that if flipping the generator on had plunged the ship into darkness, turning the oversized switch the other way could only help at this point. "He ain't Batman!"

Reaching out, Branden grabbed the other boy's shirt, rubbing his nose with his fist. "He's got a secret underground bat cave and a cool car, and a dinosaur."

Swinging his feet back and forth ineffectually, Rom finally let go of the lever. "Um…I guess he is Batman." His voice was filled with awe. "And that's reason number sixty-five why Captain Jack is better than the Doctor. Captain Jack is Batman."

There was hollow thudding on the hatch separating the boys from their qualified adult supervision which caused Branden to let out a high-pitched squeal then latched onto his brother for dear life. "It's snow ninjas!"

Rom pushed his brother away as the younger boy started fussing. "It's not snow ninjas!"

He'd spot Branden the Batman thing, but there weren't any snow ninjas in the TARDIS. This time. "It's MUM!" He knocked back. "Mum?"

He got a couple more thuds in response.

Rubbing his head with both hands, Rom tried to think past the headache he'd been suffering with for a while now. It hurt less now that the lights were out, but he still wanted to just crawl into a hole and die or take a nap, or something. He could hear muffled voices on the other side, but couldn't make any of it out. It was kinda depressing. Captain Jack wouldn't have let this happen.

XYZ

Footsteps on the stairs, two sets of them and muted voices. That was the first thing Violet's senses fixed upon. She cursed the Doctor his control over these visions and hated that he was using this as some sort of object lesson.

Especially when one voice was her grandfather's, and the other was Todd Bentley, walking towards her bedroom in her grandfather's house. "Now isn't a good time. She isn't up and about yet. This internal investigation can wait until then."

"You've put a system in place meant to protect our employees. I'm simply doing my job."

Yeah, Violet thought, as she watched from the shadows, he's doing his job, as arrogantly as possible. And in a way that uses her grandfather's own rules against him.

Sighing, her grandfather wiped sweat from his balding head, then knocked on the door to her room. It wasn't closed all the way and it swung open. "Violet?" turning, he looked around for her then sighed.

Todd's hair was shorter, but he was the same flaming turd of a personality. His eyebrows shot upward. "She seems to be very up and about."

Why couldn't she remember this? You'd think, something like this, she'd be able to recall, especially if the memories were her own.

A voice from behind her made sense of the memory. It was the Doctor in the straw hat again. "Your mind took everything in, it was just unable to process it in a useable manner. It simply stored the information, and, well, here we are."

Her grandfather walked past Todd, looking around the hall and calling her name. There was a frightened cry down near the room that used to be her mother's study. Without thinking Pete grabbed a folded blanket off the rocking chair near the door and ran toward the sound of glass breaking.

Oddly compelled to follow, Violet filed in behind Todd, who had this smirk on his face, like he'd finally gotten exactly what he wanted.

And there she was, crouched next to the wooden desk near the window, clutching her knees to her chest. The computer monitor was broken on the floor in front of her, pieces of thin plastic everywhere. She couldn't remember any of this.

It was so odd to see herself like this, thin and bruised and cut-up, muttering to herself in between hysterical shouts and sobs, bare feet rocking into the crushed mess.

Her grandfather knelt beside her, pushing the shards away. He put the blanket around the broken, huddling mass on the floor. "I told you now wasn't a good time," he grumbled to the man behind him, then wiped the tears away from the younger Violet's face. "Hey. Sweetheart, lets get you back to your room." Violet shook her head no. "Vi, you know how your grandmother feels about you wandering around the house alone. Lets get you back to your room before she comes back up here."

At least acknowledging his presence, she put her head on her grandfather's shoulder. "Made a mess."

"It's not important," he whispered. "We're going to get you put back to bed, got it?" Pete tried to get her to her feet, but when she didn't respond, he simply picked her up. "Violet—no more wandering around the house, please. You're going to hurt yourself."

The dim light coming through the window made the tears glisten off the hollow cheeks of the girl staring past and through her grandfather, not entirely sure of when or where she was. That much Violet remembered—her time sense had been messed up for months. It had been so disorienting—worse than vertigo and twice as incapacitating and confusing. "You think I'm crazy," she whispered. "You think I shouldn't be at home any more."

Putting her on the bed, he pulled the blankets over her. "Vi, I'm not going to send you away. You're going to get better—you are getting better. I just…don't know what to do for you when you're like this," he whispered close to her ear, trying to avoid Todd's watchful glare.

Hollow blue eyes looked past her grandfather to the visitor. "He wants you to leave Torchwood. All the things in his head…he thinks I'm a thing." she shuddered, then turned onto her side and held her ears, curling into a foetal position. "It's like yelling all the time. All the yelling…"

Pete turned to the other man. "She can't block anything out right now. It's driving her mad. She can hear all our thoughts and she doesn't know where or when she is. So good luck interviewing her and getting any straight answers out."

Stubborn to the end, Todd pulled a chair to the edge of the bed and took out an audio recorder. "This is Todd Bentley, it's the…seventh of March…" The figure in the bed continued sniffling quietly to herself as Todd went on. Finally he thrust the recorder in her face, after asking if she remembered the incident at the lab.

She pulled away from the microphone, but the man asked her again. Finally, her eyes snapped open and Todd sat up, startled by the purple glow.

"I think the interview's over," her grandfather announced.

"No," the girl in the bed announced, sitting up. "He wants to know what happened." It was more anger than confidence, but it was the most 'together' she'd sounded since the beginning of this nightmarish memory.

Her grandfather grabbed her wrist. "He's going to go away, Violet. You don't have to hear his thoughts any more. Just calm down."

Ignoring Pete, she looked down at the recorder and it sparked once, then dropped out of Todd's hand.

A snarl of pain or disgust or something worse twisted her lips and when her hand snapped out to grab her former coworker's, a jolt went through them both. She clutched his shaking arm until he finally managed to pull away, startled and alarmed.

Picking the recorder off the floor, the redhead watched her fearfully while backing out the door.

She collapsed onto the bed, crying. "He wanted to know, so I told him…he wanted to know. He wanted…so I…"

Her grandfather kissed her forehead. "Vi, I'm not letting anyone else in here. Not until you're well." He must have sensed how terrified she was. Continuing with reassurances, he rubbed her back until she fell asleep again, drifting off, hopefully, to some place where others' thoughts couldn't hurt her.

"And that is why we are stuck here, my dear."

She turned around, glaring at the Doctor. "And you couldn't just tell me this? You needed to make me watch it? What does that have to do with anything? I got better. Everything's fine now. I wouldn't have been able to fly the TARDIS again, if it wasn't."

He took a few steps forward, pointing with the tip of his ridiculous umbrella at the figure in the bed. "But you didn't heal from that, did you? You can't hear them in your head, but it's only because you're not listening. The openings are still raw. It's why your mental barriers fall so easily. It's why you can feel Greg's higher emotions, can't you?"

Looking away, her jaw locked.

Lowering the umbrella, he looked her square in the eye, pulling no punches. "At first, I thought, when you asked about him, that you were just remembering something—but you really could feel his agitation, couldn't you? YOU are amplifying the problem with the TARDIS. She's powerful, but not powerful enough to do this on her own. It's why I wasn't knocked unconscious until you were worried about Greg. You lowered your own barriers to see how he was doing, and that was all the room two psychically out-of-control TARDISes needed."

Hearts caught in her throat, Violet refused to look at him. "If it's true…I didn't mean it."

"You didn't mean it. That's all well and good. But the fact remains."

That she'd done this. She was killing them all, slowly. By forcing it, by leaving Earth before she was completely healed. By never dealing with the thing that had made her leave Earth and her family behind. And she had no idea what to do about it.

XYZ

When he came round, Jack knew he was in a deeper pile of dog crap than the moment when the walls exploded around them, ignited by the vibration of the sonic device. He had a bad taste in his mouth like metal, cotton and earwax, all rolled into one, and a headache like a sonovabitch, which meant he'd gone and died again.

Mostly he knew he was in deeper trouble because he was secured to a large metal chair—every last little bit of him. That meant he was about to be tortured. He hated torture. First of all, it was kind of on the painful side. And second, the whole object of torture was to get information out of you. Which was one thing, but this was accomplished by causing as much pain as possible while still keeping the subject alive and conscious.

Then one slimy head tentacle slid across his cheek, the sucker grabbing hold of his lower lip, turning his head toward his captor. "We try diplomatic. You do no follow the rules. We try for hostage negotiation, you try to escape. Now we find out what you know."

Aww hell. How lovely. He didn't know if these guys were that good, or that bad. They had engineered the whole wriggle room for escape thing, so that they could say he was being combative, thus justifying anything they put him through. They were bothering going through the political process of covering their slimy little alien asses and making it look good, but they were still torturing him for information and planning on invading Earth.

It meant there was either another layer of badness on top of the knives they were sharpening four inches from his face that he couldn't figure out yet, or these guys were just the weirdest damned things he'd ever met and their priorities were all screwed up and totally incomprehensible to human logic. Could just be some sort of twisted honour code that they needed to uphold.

It didn't matter, really. He didn't want to be around for the part where they started chipping his fingernails back, one by one. He knew just how much a man could endure before he expired-and they'd have a field day with him, and that whole not dying thing.

Speaking of dying… he'd come up here with someone. And if he'd died…what had happened to the kid?

He'd been threatening to kill Greg, but now that his demise seemed like a very real possibility, he was changing his mood on the subject. It was impossible for him to even fathom what it would do to the well-intended but slightly neurotic alien who loved him. Especially when he remembered back to how the Doctor had been, when he'd thought he'd lost Rose forever. He didn't wish that kind of self-torture on Violet, even if the kid had chosen a damned inconvenient moment to grow a spine.

Pressing his lips together, he did his best not to listen to the sordid detail of what was going to become of him, should he fail to cooperate and not tell them fully about Earth's defenses.

Jack couldn't say he was full of hope. If the explosion in the cell had killed him…what the hell had it done to Greg, who'd been standing at ground zero of the wall eruption?

He glanced up into the bloodshot green eyes of his captor and tried to muster up something resembling bravado. "Whatever. What I want to know, more than anything, is how you even KNEW we were in the middle of a TARDIS mating dance?"

TBC…


	13. Chapter 13

They were in the control room. It didn't look any different from her own childhood on the ship. The Doctor was hip-deep in an access panel, sleeves rolled up and a bundle of cables draped around his neck. Violet's mother came in, looking around for something, a mug in her hand. "What'd you do with the baby?"

The Doctor ignored her for a moment, until Violet's mother asked again. Finally he looked up at her with an innocent smile. "He's occupied."

Rose cocked her head to one side. "Where is the baby?" Realizing she wasn't going to get an answer, she walked over to the opening in the grate and looked in. "Get him out of there right now!" she shrilled, in a Jackie-esque manner. "It's dirty in there!"

The Doctor looked insulted. "He's happy! He's quiet! He hasta learn this stuff eventually, anyway!"

She crouched next to the hole, putting her mug down. "Take him out of that filthy thing."

Reaching below the grate, the Doctor grabbed for something, but there was a squeaking cry. Stopping he reached around and hauled something out of the hole, removing a bald little baby inside a battered old soda crate. Rose tried to lift him out, but he started crying again, so she simply took the box from the Doctor, resting it on one hip and wrapping her arm around it. "Well, that's not going to work. He can't stay in there forever."

Shrugging, the Doctor ducked back in the hole. "He likes the box. And if he's in the box, I can do this. We're never going to get out of here, if I don't get this working again." The frustration was evident in his voice.

Putting a hand on the one-year-old's head, his mother sighed in frustration with both. "I just haveta keep telling myself, he's a needy little creature, but Violet was twenty times worse." Standing with the box, she shook her head. "Course, I had three other people to tag team with." She started to turn around but stopped when she heard metal slamming against the grating floor. Stopping, she looked up at the coffered ceiling of the ship before looking back at the Doctor. "What?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "Nothing." They stared at each other for a moment before he finally relented. "I just—look. I don't know how to do anything other than this."

Hoisting the box up a bit higher, Rose looked at the baby, playing with his plastic teething keys. "I'm not asking you to. Just…don't put him in dirty-filthy boxes made out of splintery wood, or under the grill where there're a million things he can get killed on, ok? That's all I ask."

More silence. A strange pause in which an entire conversation seemed to be taking place—reprimand, assurance and forgiveness. And then they moved on. Her mother warned the Doctor that her mug was near his head, not to knock it over, but she'd run out of hands for it, and she'd be off, making sure Rom hadn't ingested any parts of the ship while he was under there.

And then her mother was gone, and she was standing there with the other Doctor, watching this memory fix his ship.

And what an 'other Doctor' he was—it was the old Doctor who'd poked her with his walking stick the one time they'd met, during her string of adventures in crossing timelines while getting her TARDIS working. "It was easier with you. You were older. The lad hardly came with an instruction manual, which your mother was so helpful as to provide with you."

Violet leaned against one of the coral buttresses. "Ok." She wasn't sure how to respond to that. Actually she wasn't even sure why she was there. "So you suck at being in charge of little people. What's that have to do with me?" Wait—hadn't she sworn never to speak to him a few minutes ago? She needed to work on that.

He lifted his head, possibly so that he could look down his long nose at her. "Yes. Well, it may be nothing. It may be everything. I do not know."

Hooray for enigma. "Could you be a little clearer?"

He held up one bony finger. "Ah. How many years did you resist the psychic training? At a critical point in your up bringing, when you probably had the highest absorption rate for new concepts, you were insisting you wanted to be like 'all the other' humans."

Violet looked away from both versions of the Doctor, inspecting the coat rack with great interest. "Look, I made up for it. I worked extra hard after that. And I can't undo what's done, so tell me what you're getting at." She was never talking to him ever again. Once this is over. She meant it this time.

"I don't know, yet."

She glared at him, the old guy with the long white hair, looking like a wizard far more than the Scottish fellow did. "Then why're you bothering me with this? And what happened to Branden being on the case, and us being out of here in no time? Her eyes narrowed. "And for that matter, why the hell am I being saddled with all of your previous regenerations, but we're ensconced firmly in all my memories from this regeneration. I'm sick of this."

Pushing off from the wall, she walked past him and out of the control room. Instead of seeing the rest of the rest of the ship, however, she found herself in darkness, as if nothing existed outside of that memory. "Great," she muttered to herself, attempting to turn back around and go back the way she came, but there was no light where the control room should have been. "Alright," she called out loudly. "What are you playing at? Because I've had enough of all of this. I'm supposed to have my entire life judged by you? It's laughable, really. You judging me. At least I am capable of telling the people around me that I love them. You still haven't said it to mum, even after all these years. And lemme tell you, a scared seven-year-old who has never so much as spent a night away from home, who's found herself living with a stranger in another dimension, potentially never to see her mother ever again, could certainly stand to hear that once or twice!"

Her voice echoed in the darkness then died away and she felt tears catch in her throat. Why the hell had they been in the control room for that? Did she need to be reminded that these boys had everything she'd ever wanted? Why was that potentially everything, or nothing?

Suddenly, she very sorely missed Greg. He never played these sorts of games with her. He at least had a hug and a kind word when she was moping about. The Doctor… just seemed intent on exacerbating whatever misery she was feeling lately.

God. Greg. She was going to miss—

It wasn't the old man any more, it was another face of the Doctor she'd never met—thick curly hair like Rom, redish coloured coat, obnoxiously long scarf. "She knows—you knew. Never mind. I made a lot of mistakes. I'm sorry. But listen to me. You are doing this, so we need to get to the bottom of it in here." He tapped the side of his head. "You saw something, or you know something. Something that tempts you to leave the person you care about most for an indefinite period just to eke out a bit more of your own time with him. What did you see?"

Violet turned away from him, wishing she had anybody else here with her right now, Greg, her mother. Gran. No wonder her grandmother didn't have a single good word to say about him. He really was that impossible and it seemed that Jackie Tyler, bless her heart, was the only one that saw him for what he really was.

It was a sad day when she started to see things from her grandmother's point of view.

His hand wrapped around her upper arms, punctuating his words with firm squeezes. "What did you see?" he asked again, this time more firmly. "You saw something with Greg. It's why you came back NOW of all times."

Violet hesitated, but finally the cry spilled out of her throat, a silent sob freeing itself. "I go back and see gran every week. It's been almost a year since I left, from her perspective. Granddad's been in office for half a year." She wasn't sure how to say it, so she let him put the pieces together. "I told mum how granddad lost the reelection because I stopped an invasion, and he'd gone back to Torchwood." Drawing in a deep breath, she gave him the final piece. "I didn't mean to run into gran and granddad when I was trying to stop the invasion. I knew it was risky, timelines being what they are and all. Greg was there. What am I saying? Of course he was there. He's always--" her breath hitched. "They were so surprised to see him. Granddad almost didn't give anything away. Gran's eyes started leaking." She pressed her lips together. "I'm going to lose him sooner…rather than later. And I'm scared."

XYZ

"…So I'm thinkin' since yer a growed up, you can give us some device."

Owen pulled the mobile phone away from his ear, looked at it, then put it right back where it was, his other hand on his hip. Tosh was looking at him, probably waiting for an explanation. "Right. ADVICE. 'Grownup.' Just where is your designated adult?"

"Mum's on-nee other side uh the sealed door," the boy, Rom, explained, his words tired and slow…and nearly incomprehensible.

Sighing, Owen wondered if there was a god, and if said god was hell-bent on torturing him. "What about Gwen?" There HAD to be someone he could talk to who was at least allowed to use a butter knife.

The boy groaned at him, in that whiny way the Doctor did when he felt the humans around him were being intentionally obtuse. It made him want to hang up the phone right then and there. " She's with mum. An' we can't get the door open because the 'netic seals have power, but nuthin' else does. So, I rerouted the phone through the lock on the door so I could call out, an I can't get hold of Cap'n Jack. So can you think up a good plan, already? If not, I think this qual-fies as--big enough emern-engency for num-mer eight on the mem-ry dial."

Tossing himself into the nearest swivel chair, Owen sighed, wrapping his hand tightly around the armrest. The kid sounded like shit. The longer he talked, the worse it got. "And what's number eight?"

"The Brig-dier at UNIT."

Oh yeah, that was just what he needed. They were barely holding off on London getting involved. Saying Jack had transmatted onto the ship to 'negotiate' had at least moved that particular travesty to the back burner. If that kid called UNIT, he'd have the rest of the military on him like white on rice. That and the pricks from the slowly-being-rebuilt London office would somehow make it to Cardiff before UNIT did.

Owen HATED being in charge. This second in command stuff was just shit. "Alright. So you have no power to type the code to disengage the locking mechanisms, but the locks have power. It sounds like you need to just cut the power to the locks themselves." He gestured for Toshiko to come closer. "I'm going to put Tosh on. She's much better with that sort of thing than I am and she should be able to help you with that, so give me just a second and I'll grab her," he managed with a patience he did not feel.

He put his hand over the mouthpiece before giving it to her. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but keep the kid talking. He doesn't realise it but he's been slurring anything over two syllables since he got on the phone, and losing words left and right. The kid can talk for the entire hemisphere, so I think he's starting to be affected by what's happening with the ship. And anything you can do to get both of them doing mathematics and spelling—the longer he and his brother can engage those areas of their brains, the better off they'll be."

Face contorted with concern, the woman took the phone from him. "What about the baby?"

With a grimace, Owen shook his head, not sure how to broach the bad news. Jack'd always said his bedside manner sucked, of course…corpses didn't complain much. "If the older ones are that bad off, who knows about the baby. Sooner we end this the better off we'll be. So if we can get them past the locks and they can disable the preventative measure then dump the other ship, that'd be their best chance." Of course, if he was understanding spacio-temporal theory correctly, the jettisoned rooms were going to get dumped into the Vortex, so Princess Nutters would be without a ship, and they'd be seeing even MORE of her (lucky him), but everybody'd live.

Nodding, Tosh tucked her hair behind her ear and pressed the phone up against it, a forced smile tugging at her cheeks. "Hi, sweetheart. Can you tell me what the locks look like?"

Getting up, Owen left her to it. This was such bullshit. He was looking for Ianto, and they were going to do something. He had faith in Jack…but he believed in having a plan B, both with the aliens and with the TARDISes.

XYZ

Letting out a heavy sigh of over-exertion, Rose pulled herself up onto the fat water pipe running the length of the access tunnel and sat on it, her head almost touching the hatch above her head. "Violet's right. The ships're getting grounded after this," she huffed as Gwen climbed up behind her. "Only I'm not sure what privileges I can take away."

Sliding a hand into her back pocket, Gwen pulled out her torch and an inglorious flat head screwdriver. She handed over the first object to Rose and began working on the painted-over hatch, trying to dig the hinge pins out instead of going through the lock.

They were cut off from the boys, who were surrounded on all sides by magnetically sealed doors, in the dark. Rose had managed to holler for the older boy to try his phone, and once she was reasonably certain they'd gotten a call through, she'd begun looking for other ways out of the tunnel. The damned ship was hell-bent on its current activity, and it was going to be damned if it was going to let her crew have anything to say about it.

Managing to wedge the screwdriver beneath layers of dirty white paint, Gwen began attempting to drive the pin out of the hinge. It was progressing, but extremely slow going, which wasn't all that great, considering the estimation of time that Owen had given them, until the build up of chemicals would start affecting the children. They still had three more access tunnels to get through, and a code for level dumping that they weren't quite sure about. And instead of doing this the easy way, they now had to go up and over one of the tunnels because the normal route was locked.

Gwen had seen her share of pickles with Torchwood, but this was something else entirely. "Not like you can threaten to take away television, it sounds like." What were you going to say, really? Bad ship, no banana.

Trying to maintain her balance while getting another hand on the pin, Gwen dug into it with her thumbnail and pulled while she used the screwdriver as a wedge. It came free, popping out of her hand and clanking to the sticky, slimy ground and she laughed in triumph. "One down, one to go."

Daring to look up at Rose, she saw the other woman trying to breathe deeply. Her cheeks were pale though, where they should have been flushed with the exertion of pulling herself up this far. "I'm ok," Rose muttered. "Just keep going."

But there wasn't enough force in those words to convince Gwen. "What's wrong?"

Rose drew in another steadying breath, one hand pressing against her bulge. "It's…not like labour. It's just…it's just not right. Things aren't right." She retrained the light on what Gwen was supposed to be working on. "The faster we do this, the better."

Nodding, Gwen went back to it.

XYZ

The night was perfectly clear. At the far end of the garden, Violet sat on a bench longways, knees pulled to her chest and bare feet pressed to the cold stone beneath her. Everything was covered in a fine dust of powdery snow. Before Greg sat down, he brushed the white stuff away from the spot he'd chosen. Wrapping a long coat around Violet, he kissed her cheek. "What's the rule about the weather?"

She didn't say anything. She just continued to stare up at the stars as if they held some answer.

He rubbed her arms, trying to restore some heat. "If you can see your breath, you need a coat. Lets get you inside before your gran wakes and pitches a fit." Waiting for a moment, he wrapped an arm around her when she didn't respond. "What're you doing out here?"

Violet didn't say anything for almost a full minute. "They come once a score and twenty…" she muttered. "Not right. They're gone, but it feels like they're still here. They're gone, they're all gone… They'll come back, you know. That's what the Bad Wolf's for."

Closing his eyes, Greg sighed and put another arm around her. "Sweetheart, you're just lost again. Can't we be lost inside, where it's warm?"

"I'm not lost," she whispered. "I just don't know where and when I am." Her hand came to rest upon his arm and she leaned into him, closing her eyes. "It's always so clear when the snow stops. I wanted to see the stars. The stars should tell me. But they don't make sense."

Looking up, he squinted. "Can't see much. They're just different here. That's all. This just isn't the sky you're used to."

She shuddered and he held her tighter. "Can see everything. Can see all the way to the Celonis system. We should go there. Couldn't go there before—was destroyed. It's not destroyed here. Arcadia's still there…"

"We'll go there. Soon."

The wind gusted around them, stirring the dry snow, causing the oversized coat he'd wrapped around her to flutter and come open a bit. He tugged it closed around her, and she leaned further into his embrace. "Just want to hear the TARDIS again. I just want him to listen to me."

Pulling the hair back from her neck, he kissed it. "Soon. You're getting there."

They sat there for a few minutes more, then he helped her to her feet, and back into the house. They didn't make it in the back door before a light went on in a bedroom upstairs however.

Violet had to chuckle. "Gran screamed bloody murder over that one. Sittin' outside in the snow with no shoes on. She didn't care if I was an alien and she didn't care if I was out of my mind, she said." A sigh hissed through her lips. "I actually fought back with her. I said I was an adult and I wasn't crazy—I just didn't know where I was all the time. She tried to ground me, can you believe that?"

A thin hand took hers, and she looked up at the Doctor she was most familiar with. "Greg said that's when he knew I was going to be alright. When I yelled back at her. And he was right. I got lost a lot less after that. We left a few months after."

The Doctor pointed at the light flicking on in the kitchen. "That was the door. That right there."

"What do you mean?"

"You were getting lost because your mind was trying to heal the broken psychic barriers. But you stopped working on it then. All you did after that was stop listening, you didn't turn the radio off. The background noise was always there. Why is that?"

Violet looked away from him, at the snow blowing around the stone path. She watched it dance in the wind, swirling in tiny circles as it moved. There were so many reasons. Reasons why she'd left Earth, reasons why she'd willed herself to stop hearing everything around her. The largest was that she just wanted to leave. The sooner the connections were no longer raw, the sooner she could be off the dreadful planet that had stopped being home ages before this final blow.

And…if she simply stopped listening…she could still hear Greg when his mind called out. She craved that kind of closeness. It meant she could indulge in her clinginess without appearing to. "He's always there. Always. He found me. And he stayed up with me every night, and found me when I wandered off." Her voice broke. "He—he takes care of me. Still does. I—I can't take care of myself."

Familiar arms wrapped around her, pulling her into a comforting hug and it was almost like being a child again, when the universe was exciting and new, and there wasn't anything that couldn't be solved by a hug and some kind words. "You have to let him go," the Doctor whispered gently. "You saw what's coming. You have to let him go even before he leaves you." She stiffened. "No. I don't mean to take him home. I mean…you have to release him enough to let him do whatever it is Time expects of him." The Doctor pulled away just a bit, just enough to get a finger under her chin. "You have to shut him out of your head. That's the first step to us getting out of here. And you'd better make up your mind to do it soon—the walls are becoming thicker. Everything's more palatable, more real. We're not going to be able to find our way back, soon."

Violet bit her lips together, trying to control the tears threatening to break free.

The Doctor rubbed her shoulder soothingly, the way her mother used to after a nightmare when she was a small child. This was a nightmare. And if she woke, it would only be to go back to another. "I know this hurts. I know it's hard. And I'm sorry." The Doctor's support almost made her crack, but she managed to hold in the tears. If she started crying, she'd never stop.

The back door opened and Greg came outside, followed by her grandfather a few moments later. They both looked up at the moon, trying not to listening to the yelling going on inside.

Her grandfather shifted, his slippers scraping against the stone patio. He zipped up his coat, breathing into his hands. "Well, situation normal, there."

Greg wasn't wearing a coat. It was then she realized he had given her his coat. He shoved his hands under his armpits, shifting his weight back and forth just trying to keep warm. "Yup. A good sign, I think."

Nodding, her grandfather shoved his hands into his pockets. "For both of them."

She watched the younger man's teeth chatter as they stood there, waiting for tempers to die down, and it killed her, twisting in her stomach like a knife. He'd given her his coat. Someone who didn't need it nearly as badly as he did.

Now she was going to lose him. She didn't know when, but soon.

Tears ran down her cheeks silently as she watched them. It was wrong. It could end horribly. But maybe she could…

"You know you can't, Vi."

It was then that the sobbing began full force. She couldn't just let go of him, of the piece of him that was always near her heart. The Doctor was asking her to give that up, for the little time they had left. She wasn't sure she was capable of it.

He pulled her into another embrace, pressing her head to his shoulder and let her cry.

Eventually the wracking sobs became moans of grief. A short time after that, they were sniffles and pained sighs. "That's the problem with being a keeper of Time," the Doctor told her sympathetically. "Sometimes you live your life in reverse. You have to mourn him before he's gone. I'm sorry for that."

Violet picked her head up off of his shoulder, nodding. She didn't trust herself to speak but hopefully he knew that she would try.

TBC…


	14. Chapter 14

Owen felt awkward for a moment suggesting it, but eventually just shoved his hands into his pockets and got it over with. "I think it's time to break into the 'do not use' section."

Ianto looked up from the last bin of uncatalogued junk. "No."

Yeah. This being in charge thing was for the birds. "That wasn't a suggestion, Ianto. Second in command, all that shit. But it takes two keys to open the lock. Are you with me?"

The Welshman put the awkwardly shaped device back in the bin, then turned to face his teammate, 'that look' in his eye. The one Owen saw the last time he wanted to go against Jack's wishes. That look that said yes, fucker, I really will shoot. Then does.

Ok, so Owen wasn't quite as over that whole shooting him thing as he thought. "Look. I know how you are about disobeying a direct order. But seriously—there isn't going to be a mess to clean up, if we don't do something. Jack's been incommunicado since he went up there. And that kid's more likely to get him killed than do any good. So as the second in command, I'm making the executive decision that we're gonna do something. Just incase." Implication: incase Jack's already dead.

"No." Ianto repeated, rather put out that the medic could be so slow. "If Jack's up there, we can sort this. This is going to end up a Torchwood One-style mess if we don't. Diplomacy-"

A hand snapped up, waving off any further explanation. "Is for shit. Look what it's got us so far. Ok, you wanna get us all blown the hell up. That's fine. But those kids in that ship have run out of time. I couldn't give a shit less about that alien git, but those kids didn't deserve that. Rom was just on the phone—the kids losing hold, fast. If you won't give me your key for Jack, then help me with our other problem."

Owen hadn't wanted to play that card. Ianto didn't like the Doctor, and he hated the children. But hell—they were kids. It wasn't like they deserved any of this—even if they did dirty up the Hub and usurp Jack's attention. They were kids.

He could see Ianto hesitating, before reaching into his pocket and heading for the steps. "Fine. But it's on your head."

Following him, Owen frowned. "Isn't it always."

XYZ

Once upon a time, back when Violet was interested in such things, she'd catalogued all of the Doctor's various neuroses. It had started one boring afternoon while trying to sneak through a puritanical town on Mentros, in the Velda system. All they had to do was make it to the other side of the city and back to the TARDIS without being noticed. Without being seen as different from the norm that was so highly prized in this civilization.

But they couldn't just get through the town. No, it started with an agitated tapping of his fingers beneath the drab sackcloth robes they were hidden beneath and ended with him offering an editorial opinion on the benefits of fish to a shopper at the town market.

After that they'd had plenty of time for her to begin a list, what with them holing up in a hayloft for the better part of a day, until the trouble cleared. There was the obvious Attention Deficit Disorder. Coupled with, well, his total detachment from reality. That was the only way she could think to explain it. Because if she tried to figure it out, it would probably end up with her declaring the Doctor insane.

Only an idiot or a lunatic would attempt to buy her freedom with a box of strike anywhere matches and a cow. Well, another flaw that she'd detected in the Doctor was his perpetual insistence that he was much cleverer than he was. He did have luck on his side, though. She'd give him that—somehow her captors had accepted the trade.

He had numerous other flaws—he didn't know what a spoon was for, didn't wear socks, and wasn't capable of landing the TARDIS in the right place and time twice in a row. He also tended to keep people at a distance. It was an amazing dichotomy to maintain—having the intense relationship with someone forged by all of these trials, but to still reserve that last piece of emotional closeness, never giving it over completely.

She'd always seen that as a flaw. Now she wasn't so sure. Not when she was doing her damnedest to close Greg out of her head, and just couldn't. Part of it was stubbornness on her part. She didn't want to give up that last bit of contact. Another part of it was being unable to find him, to shut him out.

The thread was there, like seeing something out of the corner of the eye, but she couldn't grab hold of it. This made things very tricky indeed. She reached out again into the nothingness and looked in all of the places her mind could see, but she simply ignored, as it was easier to ignore these things than block them out. Putting a barrier between her mind and the rest of the universe would be necessary, just as soon as she found Greg and severed the connection between them.

If she'd have simply behaved like those stodgy old Time Lords from Gallifrey and obeyed every instruction in all of her textbooks, this wouldn't have happened. She'd have kept a fair distance from events and from people from these time lines, and she wouldn't be trapped in an amalgam of consciousnesses, trying to block her Earth-born lover out of her head so that she could mourn him properly before his passing.

Well, if the Doctor had abided by those same rules, she wouldn't be here.

What was the deal, anyway? He broke some rules, or bent them horribly out of shape. But others were sacred. Not crossing time lines, not changing events once he'd become part of them. She was now unwittingly part of the events of Greg's demise, now that she'd witnessed her grandmother startled at the sight of him. It wouldn't be possible to enter the stream somewhere between point A, the last family meal she ate with them, and B, that awkward encounter in that dark hallway without risking reapers or worse.

She wanted to risk it for him. It was foolish, it was irresponsible, but if you didn't love someone enough to risk destroying the universe for him, what did that leave you with?

Duty.

Goddamned duty.

It was why the Doctor had never pushed too hard on the boundaries between realities, to get back to her mother. He had a duty to not destroy all of creation as it was known. She wished she was as strong of will as he was.

How was she to give up laying in bed for hours, talking about nothing and everything, skin pressed against skin, when she had the ability to stop those events that would lead to their parting? How could she give up his hand brushing against hers in the control room, or the playful way he intentionally stepped on her toes. Making love in prison cells too narrow to manage it properly, escapes from places no other humans would see. His dark brown eyes and the way he looked at her, as if she was a better person than she knew herself to be.

All of that, or duty.

Suddenly she understood why some religious orders around the universe promoted or enforced celibacy among its anointed ones. How could one possibly be loyal to both? It would seem that duty to the universe and duty to the love of another should mean the same thing, result in the same actions being taken. But that wasn't always the case.

The nothingness became clouded, and she pulled back from it, disoriented. "What would you do, if it was mum? How would you live with yourself?"

She felt him somewhere in the mist obscuring Greg, but couldn't see him. "I'd do what I had to."

"Thanks for being so ambiguous all the time. "

Sensing him sigh more than hearing it, she almost tried to reach out to the Doctor, but didn't. She wasn't sure if she could bare the mental contact right now with her defenses so muddled and nonexistent. "I was told, the valiant child would die in battle. That's what I was told. I had to live with that. I had to look her in the eye and lie to Rose and tell her she wouldn't. I didn't know the exact circumstances, and it's only by a fluke in the time line, your grandfather mostly, that she's here now. I've lived with it, Vi. I know the lies you've been telling, the ones you still have to tell. So don't ever think I don't know."

Pushing against the walls of the TARDIS' psychic smothering, she looked for him one more time. It wasn't like the connection had snapped—merely faded away. "Lying. I might not have to—I don't. I can't feel him."

What was worse, she couldn't sense the Doctor any more, either. It was just her, and the dense fog of her mind. "Doctor?"

No response. Not even a mental urging for her to continue on this path. She was well and truly alone.

Swallowing back agony, she steeled herself, looking at the sad excuses for psychic barriers. She had a duty to perform, and wallowing in the loss of a single creature from a single timeline would not get it done.

Somehow she'd learn to harden herself. Some day it wouldn't matter.

XYZ

Rose…looked like hell. And that was putting it nicely. They'd circumvented each of the access tunnels, one at a time, by going up and over. Now they were at the last tunnel and they had no solution for the mechanism to manually dump the cargo rooms, who knew what had become of the boys, and Rose's laboured breathing and sweat-covered face were starting to make Gwen worry more than she already had been to that point.

Leaning against the wall of the dark, humid tunnel, Rose tried to steady herself. "I think we can move this lock," she whispered. "It's not magnetically sealed. We should be able to get the door open."

Nodding, Gwen shined her torch on the oval shaped door with the enormous heavy-looking pins. "Once we get through there, how do we get rid of the other ship?"

Sliding down the wall, Rose let out a long breath as she came to sit on the damp floor. "Haven't quite worked that out, yet." She held out her hand. "Phone?" she asked.

Digging into her pocket, the other woman produced her mobile. "Will we get signal down here?"

Rose assured her that yes, they would. As soon as she set about dialing a long series of numbers that Gwen couldn't imagine being any earthly sort of exchange, the former PC flashed the light on the door again, trying to think up a plan of attack.

Licking her lips, Gwen bit down on the end of the mini torch and began yanking on an old pipe. As she threw all of her weight into it, she felt a twinge of remorse. They had to be hurting the ship with all of this circumventing, but what other choice was there? She supposed they could all kiss and make up later, if it came to that. Sometimes, life just wasn't fair, and you had to do shitty things. That's what being a grownup was all about.

When the pipe broke free, she used it as leverage on the stuck handle. I took some doing, but the handle finally gave way, throwing Gwen backwards and onto the floor as it swung open, creaking and hesitant.

Pushing herself to her knees, Gwen wiped her hands on her jeans, then looked behind her to Rose.

Taking a deep breath, the pained and pregnant woman rested her head against the wall, ending the call. "No answer. They're on the line." Closing her eyes, she wiped a line of sweat away from her bottom lip. "Ok. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that things might be a little worse than we thought."

XYZ

"Hey, Rom—stay with me now. I need you to talk to me. Did the cable crossover work?" Toshiko leaned forward in her chair, pressing the headset further into her ear, as if that would make the boy respond faster. "Roman—did you get the cables to cross over?"

There was some fumbling from the phone, then the younger one took a deep breath—she was sure it was Branden, even the inhalation had a soprano whine to it. "Rom's barfin' right now." He sniffed, sounding like he was sucking back in a good bit of mucus. "The cables won't reach. Eww. I think he fell asleep in it."

Tosh looked up at the rafters, licking her lips and searching for inspiration. Now she had to do this with a four-year-old. Not to mention not knowing what had happened to the older boy. When it rained at Torchwood, it poured. "Branden, can you drag him out of it?" That'd be just perfect—the poor kid drowning in his own vomit.

The kid moaned with effort. "Not enough room. Too heavy."

Ok. She needed to get them out of there sooner, rather than later. "Branden, what's two times two?" she really needed to keep the one that was still awake with her, and Owen's suggestion of keeping his brain working seemed like the best bet right now.

"Eight," the kid responded instantly. "Seven."

Yeah. They were in trouble. "Branden, can you tell me what else you two have in there? Do you have anything to make those cables reach? We just need anything metal that'll carry the power."

The boy sucked in another breath. He was going down fast, as well. "Other line's ringing. I don't remember how ta change it over. Its one of the buttons…" There was a long pause. "Mummy said I'm not 'loud to play with 'tricity after that one time."

"Branden, this is an emergency. I'm sure your mother would understand. Now, do you have anything to connect the power with."

There was a moments hesitation, but he wheezed again, and she was at least reassured that he was thinking about it. They were brilliant children, but they were still kids. She hoped he was ok enough to get through this. "Yeah. I got sumthin' I can do it with." But there was something about the way he said it that made her a bit worried. "My shoes got rubber soles. I'll be ok."

Oh hell. Before she could yell at him to stop, the phone crackled, and then went out. Someone needed to tell that kid that HE was not made out of metal, even if HE was conductive material.

XYZ

Metal and earwax in the mouth, head felt like it'd been slammed in a door, repeatedly. And the face in front of him—one he hadn't expected to see, but still…

"You!" Jack ground out, just as soon as his vision cleared. There was still smoke and fire obstructing his vision, but that outline was unmistakable. "You killed me! Again."

The figure shifted uncertainly, offering a hand to help. "That's gratitude for you, I suppose."

Not accepting the offered help, Jack sat up and struggled out of the now broken shackles on his hands, trying not to breathe in the smoke filling the room. "You killed me once and it was kind of cute, you killed me again and it kind of pissed me off. Now I'm just going kill you right back, see how much YOU like it!"

Groggily getting to his feet, Jack noticed the dead or unconscious torturers around him—he didn't exactly know or care what their status was at the moment. At the moment he had a score to settle. Staggering forward he threw all the energy he had into the punch, connecting with the other party's jaw. Both of them fell toward the open cell door, collapsing on the ground in a heap of flesh.

"Are you done?"

Jack pulled back, preparing for another punch. "No."

"Well, finish up. This place is about to blow."

TBC…


	15. Chapter 15

The weighty, thick and slightly oval-shaped door hissed as the lock unsealed itself, but it was too big and too heavy to open. Branden leaned against it, but he was still jittery.

Just as he started sliding down the door, it swung open and he fell out of the hatch and onto a pair of very familiar shoes. "Ung…" he moaned, feeling terribly shaky and just a little sick.

Hands grabbed him under the arms, picking him upright as he tried to get feet under himself. "Branden, what did I tell you about running electrical currents through yourself?"

Blinking a few times, he looked up at the Doctor who was completely awake and alive, and stuff. Impressively awake and alive, and stuff. Maybe the Doctor didn't suck so bad after all. He was still no Captain Jack. But he'd do in a pinch.

Rubbing his itchy nose, Branden tried to focus his eyes on the Doctor's nose. The Doctor had really weird nostrils. Branden hoped his nostrils weren't weird when he grew up or regenerated. Weird nostrils wouldn't do at all. "Not ta do it. Scares mummy." He got a quick squeeze, and then was placed back on the ground. The Doctor kept hold of his shirt until he was steady on his feet. "Tosh said it was ok."

The Doctor's eyebrow shot upward as he stepped through the doorway and grabbed Rom, hauling the boy to a sitting position. Pulling a cloth out of the pocket of his jacket, he wiped the mess from the still-unconscious lad's face, then began trying to wake him. "Rom…come on, kiddo."

Glassy eyes appeared from beneath fluttery lashes. It was the weird pool-y look in his eyes that made the younger boy worry. What'd happen if Rom wasn't there to boss him around? Or at least be up to doing all the bossing straight away. Branden wondered if his brother would be OK. "He frew up, then he falled asleep in it."

Frowning, the Doctor shook the older boy a bit. Rom's head lulled to the side. "Come on, Pork-chop. We're not out of the woods yet."

Branden watched the Doctor get Rom to his feet too, wondering just what sorta woods you could find in the TARDIS and if there'd be hotdogs there.

XYZ

Unsure where to go from there, Gwen slid the mobile phone out of Rose's grasp. The other woman was on the verge of unconsciousness, but her hand still clutched the phone as if it were a life preserver. "We'll get out of this."

Moaning, Rose tried to sit up, but only managed to slump a little further down the wall, both hands pressed to her midsection. Her eyes closed and her lips grew slack, even though the groans of pain continued on, echoing off the walls of the corridor, making it sound like some sort of terrible haunting.

Dialing every number she could think of, Gwen swore under her breath when no one answered. Crouching next to Rose Tyler, she felt the other woman's pulse, which was thready, but there. They needed help. If not for Rose, they certainly needed it to dump the other ship, to bring her some relief.

"Mummy?"

Finally someone answered on her third ring through the list of numbers she could remember. "Branden, sweetheart, it's Gwen. Are you boys alright?" They'd seemed to have found the answer the mathematical predicament with the ship, that's why Rose had been attempting to call them before.

There was some fumbling with the phone, and she wondered just how much worse things could get. "Where's Rose?"

No hello, nothing. But at least the Doctor was up and about and the children had something resembling adult supervision (Gwen was still unsure how she felt about the idea of him being around impressionable youth). "She's here, she's mostly conscious. But she's not doing well." He swore on the other end, saying that's what he'd been afraid of. "We're outside the store levels. We need to know how to flush the rooms."

The Doctor cursed again and she heard the younger boy repeating him in the background with impossible vigor. They were like little parrots at that age, and she had no idea what the children were picking up. "Well, you can't dump the ship just yet. If Violet doesn't wake up first, then she might not wake up at all. Who knows what that kind of psychic disconnect, that abruptly, would do to her. Might just kill her outright."

Gwen looked down at Torchwood's part time assistant. For a moment she thought the other woman had slipped into unconsciousness, until she bit her lips and frowned, swallowing down another strangled moan. "I don't think Rose can wait."

"Put her on." There was no hesitation, just a direct order that, given the circumstances, she was hesitant to question.

Hair clung to Rose's sweaty face and Gwen brushed it away before pressing the phone to her ear. Her feelings for the way the other woman ran her life aside Gwen didn't enjoy seeing someone else in pain, especially not as much as Rose obviously now faced. "It's the Doctor."

Somehow, when Rose nodded, she managed to sink into the wall just a little bit more. "Hi. Yeah." Her eyes closed, and she bit her lips again, trying to keep another cry of anguish from erupting. "I under--" the woman's breath caught, and Gwen knew the tough façade was crumbling finally. "It's not labour. It's something else. I can wait. The baby can't," she whimpered, sweat trickling down her nose. "I—I know. I know."

Rose slumped forward a little and Gwen barely managed to catch the phone before it clattered to the ground. She put an arm around the pregnant woman, looking around her for anything resembling inspiration or relief. "She's doing worse than she lets on," Gwen announced to whoever was still on the other end.

He let out a breath. "Fine. Branden's going to help you with the combination seal. Rom and I have other things to do." With that, the call was disconnected.

"Great," Gwen muttered, getting to her feet. Not only was her help too small to really help, but he was probably going to be too late.

XYZ

The device was round and springy, like a coiled snake. It was a bit black and slick like one too, the hub lights bouncing off of it and making it look oily or wet. Grabbing one handle, Owen gestured for Ianto to grab the other. "This ought to do it."

Ianto hesitated before snatching at it. "It could also kill the ship."

Glaring at the other party, Owen waited for Ianto to take the other handle and help with the lifting. "Do I look like I give a shit?"

Shifting a bit, Ianto seemed to look around his boss's office for some sort of guidance that he wasn't getting elsewhere, but eventually bent to help his second-in-command with the load. "I guess you don't."

Sighing, Owen wondered if it was worth explaining again. Ianto and Jack had some undefined 'thing' going on, and so it was pretty easy to see why the other party involved in this office raiding experiment would be resistant to just getting through this with the minimum amount of protesting and bitching and whining.

Just as they hoisted the disruptor up off the office floor, Toshiko poked her head around the doorway, hair swinging around her face. "Call from the Doctor…"

"Nice of the bastard to finally join us," Owen grumbled. "I'll just assume you've told him about our grand and glorious plan." Ianto shot him a look. Yeah, yeah, the plan had been entirely Owen's, but it was no time to split hairs, really. "And lemme guess, he's going to sort it all himself."

Tosh shook her head, looking down at the device in their grasp. "No. He wants you on it immediately. It might distract the ship enough for what he's trying. But once the door releases, he needs you to find Rose."

Sighing, Owen started dragging the coiled hunk of alien technology toward the office door. "That's how I know how fucked they are—he's asking for our help in breaking his ship."

XYZ

There wasn't a cloud in the sky. It was just blue, blue, blue, forever and ever. She wanted to just jump off the earth and miss the ground. She wanted to touch the blue sky and feel what made it so blue between her fingertips. In her mind it was soft and squishy, like modelling clay, but warm and comforting.

The earth seemed so…transitory. It had everything she could ever want—dirt to play in and flowers to pick and worms to pull out of the ground on rainy days. There were spiders on the earth, and frogs and toads, and kitty cats and turtles. It truly was paradise. But the sky seemed to be forever. It seemed like it would last, even after everything else faded. Even if it was hidden by rain clouds or darkness or any of those other things that made the sky seem less awesome and fearsome and magnificent than it really was. The sky would be there, and it would feel warm and squishy around her.

Somehow, she just knew it.

She also knew she wasn't allowed to do it, but she was having trouble remembering why. Well, Uncle Mickey wasn't allowed to push her that high on the swing anyway, so everybody was doing things they weren't supposed to do.

At least, that's the thought that flittered through her four-year-old mind in that second of weightlessness, before she plummeted toward the ground.

The instant her knees came in contact with the dry ground, she remembered why you weren't allowed to jump off the swings.

Cos it hurt. A lot.

She tried to scramble to her feet and smile it off, because she knew she was going to get in trouble if she didn't, but as soon as she stood up, it went from just smarting to really, REALLY stinging…and bleeding. So she did the only sensible thing in the circumstances…

She broke out into huge globby tears mingled with enormous broken-hearted sobs. Now she had owwies, AND she was going to get in trouble.

Strong arms picked her up. "Shh… no crying. Shh…" Looking at the concern on Uncle Mickey's face only made her cry harder. "Here comes your mum." She buried her head in Mickey's shoulder, as if that would somehow save her getting 'the look.' It wouldn't. But she had to try. "Someone tripped over her own two feet."

She almost started, surprised that Mickey would lie for her. Probably because he wasn't supposed to be pushing her so high to begin with, but here was a grownup, lying to another grownup. These things weren't done. "Got a pretty good head start on it, too. Full throttle, into the ground."

But when she looked up, it wasn't her mother standing there, and Uncle Mickey had vanished. She was standing there, entirely alone, save for this new addition to the scene. It was someone with lean features, crazy hair and freckles like her own. "Violet, you can't stay here forever."

Studying him carefully, seeing the way the clear summer day flickered in his chocolate-coloured eyes, she began to remember. "I could."

His eyebrows arched in sympathy. "You can't. You know that. And if you don't leave now…you won't ever be able to."

Looking around at the fresh-cut grass and the playground equipment, and all the dry earth, just waiting for her to dirty herself in, she shook her head no. "It's not just those memories. There're others here too."

"Violet. You won't ever see him again if you stay in here."

She clenched her suddenly burning eyes shut. "You already made me say goodbye," she whispered bitterly. "You left me here all alone, and you made me say goodbye. Well, I've already said goodbye. But…in here…in here he'll be ok. Forever."

Sliding his hands into his pockets, the Doctor took a few steps back away from her. "I can't stay. Your mother is isn't doing too well, and if you stay here, you won't see any of them ever again. You won't be hurt again, but you won't make any new memories either. You'll just replay everything like a sad, lonely recording. I know you don't think you are—but you're stronger than that. And you're smart enough to know that those things won't be of comfort for long. Nothing lasts forever, Vi. NOTHING. Not this, not me and your mother, not the moon, not the Earth, not the stars. Not even the grief.

Storm clouds closed overhead and everything grew hazy, like a smeared chalk picture. She almost couldn't see him any more, and she wasn't sure if she was scared or relieved. "I have to go now. But if you stay, just know. Your mother loves you. Your grandmother loves you. I--"

He hesitated, fading from sight. "I'll miss you."

Everything grew shimmery and dark…another memory faded to nothingness, slinking and receding to the corners of her mind. "Is she coming?" a familiar voice asked—Rom. Her brother. She'd never see the person he'd become. Never see her new brother. Or any other of the other siblings her mother was bound to pop out, since mum was bound and determined to be a one-woman loom to resurrect a dying species.

When the Doctor spoke next, it sounded so far away, like he was already gone from memory in addition to sight. "I don't know."

The boy groaned, his voice echoing distantly. "God. What a dork-hole."

TBC…


	16. Chapter 16

Gwen heard a high pitched groan of effort just before she saw stumpy short-clad legs appearing through the access hatch she and Rose had come through a few minutes before. Dangling for a moment, the small boy hit the metal pipe just below him with a huff and a thunk, then slid down toward the floor.

Rose stirred. "Branden?" She seemed to know it was him without even opening her eyes. "What're you--" the rest came out as a sharp, rasping breath. "Branden, don't…"

The boy rushed to his mother then licked his lips, studying her with concern. "Mummy?" he instantly looked to Gwen for resssurance. "She ok?"

Unsure what to say in the circumstance, Gwen looked back to the already-opened door. "We need to dump the other ship. Do you remember the formula the Doctor gave you?"

Branden never took his eyes away from his mother. His hand twitched at his side, and Gwen was half afraid the boy would start crying at any moment. "She's sick. I'll get the Doctor. He knows what ta do." He started turning to leave, to go back the way he came.

"No," Gwen ordered. "This is the best way to make her better. The other ship being here is making her sick." It was a extremely simplified view of the problem, but that's about where things stood, none-the-less.

"The Doctor--"

Reaching out, Gwen grabbed the boy's arm so he couldn't flee. "The Doctor told you to help us, didn't he?" Branden shook his head solemnly, studying his shoes. "That's because he knows your mother is sick. Look at me Branden." She gave him a tiny shake just to punctuate her seriousness. "Listen to me. We need to do what the Doctor wanted us to do. That is how we'll help your mummy."

His round little eyes met hers, and Gwen's heart broke. "It'll help mummy?"

She nodded, not sure what other encouragement she could offer at this point. Getting to her feet, she wiped the floor slime on her jeans then took his hand. "We got the last door open. I found the controls, but I don't know how to get it to release rooms."

As they passed through the door, Gwen looked back at Rose, who had slumped onto her side, rather unconscious. She'd be OK alone…she had to be. IT wasn't like there was any choice. Branden was a small child and would need any assistance she could give, even if it was keeping him focused and not allowing his worry for his mother to swallow him whole.

He rushed into the room, almost tripping over one lace that had come untied. Coming up to the long metal control unit, he looked up and down it, a bit overwhelmed. "I was just lookin' through the pictures in Rom's text book—I didn't read the words." Looking back at Gwen, panic gleamed in his slightly wet eyes. "I don't know what the controls do. I don't know which one's the release for the cargo rooms, and I don't know how to put the combination in."

His nose began running and his eyes were dripping soon after and it was like a knife twisting in Gwen Cooper's chest. Why had the Doctor sent a small boy to do an adult's job? Why had he put Rose's life in the hands of her child, someone who would probably be crushed by the guilt if he couldn't figure all of these very adult things out?

The risk he was taking with the life of Rose's unborn child, what kind of madman did that sort of thing to a four year old, making him responsible in such a prolific way?

XYZ

All the air rushed out of Violet's lungs and she had trouble drawing in another breath. That's actually what drew her towards awakeness—the body's natural desire to continue drawing in breaths.

She was on her side, her head hurt. Her side hurt even worse. Pain rumbled through her again as something connected with her ribs. "Get up! Get up, get up, get UP!"

Opening her eyes, she slapped her brother's foot away from her. "What the hell are you DOING?" New levels of kicking someone while they were down.

It was then that she looked around. She was laying on the floor, outside the infirmary, right where she had fallen. The Doctor got taken to the medlab. Branden got tucked into bed. She got left. There was something that just so…figured about that.

Rom kicked her again for good measure. "Asshat-dorkhole. I was supposed to make sure you got up. God. What a…douchebag. You cause all this, then you go running away."

Before he could plant another one in her ribs, she grabbed his foot and sat up. "You watch too much television."

The boy's round face twisted in a perfect little pout. "Mum says I listen to Captain Jack too much."

"That too." Violet sighed, holding onto the wall for support as she tried to get up. It was rather an inglorious act, she more slithered up the wall than anything else. "What's going on? Where's the Doctor?"

Rom looked down the corridor. "She's awake!" he shouted. "What now?"

A loud banging erupted, something high and tinny. It rumbled from the general vicinity of the control room and vibrated towards them. Ahh yes, the familiar sounds of fixing the ship. "Rom, find your brother! Help him!" the Doctor screamed. "Violet, in here with me, now!"

XYZ

Owen held the phone away from his ear until the yelling stopped. "Thanks for that bit where you ruptured my ear drum."

"Don't have time for this," the Doctor grumbled on the other end. There was more banging in the background. "Do you have the unit hooked up?"

Biting rubber away from one of the copper wires in hands, Owen cursed as he jabbed himself. "No."

"We have to be done with this when Brandon dumps the ship."

Ianto grabbed the wire out of his hand and jammed it into the small hole made by the lock on the door. Tearing off a piece of black electrical tape, he secured it as best he could. Owen went to work on the next wire, trying to pull it free from the interior of the coiled device. "Yeah, I got that. Look, we're doing it."

The Doctor sighed. "Where's Toshiko?"

Tucking the phone against his shoulder, Owen sighed. "She's busy with Jack. We are in the middle of a bona fide invasion. Look, any idiot can splice this, and I'm not just any idiot. So give us a few minutes. You'll have your distraction."

"Violet. Good." There was fumbling on the other end. "I need all of that old communications cable. We need to run it from the relays in the ceiling to the door censor system. I don't care if you can't see straight."

Well, good, Owen thought, as he handed the next wire to Ianto before working on firing the damned thing up. At least the Doctor was as shitty to those kids as he was to the rest of them. Somehow that meant there was a balance being maintained in the universe, which was reassuring.

Finding the right switches, Owen turned it on, hoping it had enough power to do what they needed it to do.

XYZ

Rom almost got stuck in the last vent. Ok, it was more than almost stuck. He had been stuck, but managed to wriggle free just before he started panicking. Panicking didn't anyone any good the Doctor said, and he was beginning to concur.

Even if the air was thick with a sickening psychic energy that was making him feel like he was moving through peanut butter…he couldn't panic. The Doctor had said this was important.

Or at least he did as he slid out of the final hatch, hitting the main water pipe, and made his way downward to the dark passage leading to the tunnel before the cargo level. He'd felt it coming down here; his youngest brother's distress. But to see his mother in such a state…it was tough to just move on to where the flickering dim light and Branden's unhappy squeals were coming from.

Last week they'd been doing something mummy told them not to. First of all, they left the TARDIS without permission, which was rule number one. They were more likely to be allowed to go swimming without supervision than be allowed outside the ship without permission. But the Doctor wasn't moving fast enough for them, and they were told this place had the best three dimensional puzzles in the system, so it wasn't like they'd just left for the fun of it.

And they got a teeny bit captured by local renegades. It had helped that they were cute, or at least the Doctor had said so—otherwise things would have gone worse than being held for ransom. But after they were back at the ship, the Doctor had sat them both down and said first of all, they were, under no circumstances, to mention this to their mother. He gave them one freebie, and this was it. One truly stupid thing that they could do and he wouldn't report back to their mum just how horrible they'd been. Then of course he'd gone into all the thousands of other ways they were in trouble, but at least they wouldn't have mum-guilt hanging over their heads the next time they went to visit her.

Seeing her slumped there, though, he wished so very desperately that he could tell his mum just how badly behaved he'd been, so that she could scold him and take privileges away.

Somehow he mustered up the nerve to just walk right past her and into the antechamber for the cargo level.

Gwen Cooper (the party pooper—Rom had a career as a poet ahead of him, he thought) was trying to keep Branden from hyperventilating as the boy carefully flipped switches. "Look, your brother can help. Nothing to worry about."

Rom shook his head, nothing but seriousness about him. "Gotta be faster, Bran. Mum's not doing good."

The younger boy turned around to look at him, face as white as a ghost. "I don't know what to do. I think I'm doing it all wrong."

Rushing to the long panel, Rom looked everything over. In the grand scheme of things, he only had a slightly better idea than his brother what to do about this whole mess. "Ok. I know how to get it to ask us for the code. But do you remember the formula?"

Sniffling, the boy wrapped his arms around Gwen's legs, clinging for dear life. "Parts. Not all."

Turning one of the dials to one-eighty, he kicked the base of the panel, initiating the request sequence. "Well… shit," he muttered.

"Roman," the lady scolded.

He turned back to her, bitting his lower lip for a second. "I don't remember it either."

Her eyes widened. "Shit."

"That's what I said."

XYZ

There were days when Jack felt he had the moral high ground. This was one of those days. This was one of those days when killing stupid people was but one of the many services he provided to humanity. "What the hell do you mean this ship is about to blow?"

Through the smoke something was tossed in his general direction and Jack fumbled with it before getting hold. Turning it over in his hand, he almost shit himself, not quite believing how this was going. Five minutes ago, he'd been half-dead. . "Where the hell did you get this?"

"Just what do you think it is? It's our ticket out. Personal transmat. We get out of here, the ship blows, the other two get caught in the explosion, we all go home happy."

Trying to hand it back, Jack shook his head. "It's not going to work. There're other ships. And don't think I am going to forget about that whole killing me thing."

Ducking his head out of the door, his tag-along looked both ways. "You were incapacitated. No telling how long that would have taken to heal—I mean, they broke both of your legs. I figured killing you was the quickest way to get you back on your feet. Can we go now? They're coming."

Stepping over dead or unconscious bodies (Jack wasn't stopping to check), he followed Greg to the door. "You know, you'd be a bastard after my own heart if it weren't for that whole part where you weren't even supposed to be up here to begin with. And you killed me. Twice."

The young man was soot covered and his hair and clothes looked a little fried. He winced, ducking back in the cell as the sound of clopping feet came nearer. "Yeah. Had some other stuff going on here. And I'd explain it, but you're going to need a diagram to figure out just what these aliens had running. I'll make you a little chart, later." He ran a hand through his hair. "Hit it, and lets get out of here. Otherwise we're going to go kablewy."

Jack's teeth ground as he looked at the device, long and remote-like. "It's not going to solve the bigger problem."

Greg looked at him, just as angry as Jack felt. "It is! Look, I have everything worked out. Now lets just get out of here."

Jaw set, the older man shook his head, obviously dissatisfied with the situation but out of options. "Fine. Lets do this." He grabbed Greg's arm with one hand and depressed the transport button.

True to form, and the way things had been going in general for Jack since this whole visit from the TARDIS contingency had started…nothing happened. Zip. Zilch. Nadda.

As slime sucking aliens filled the doorway, Jack groaned. "I really fucking hate you."

TBC…


	17. Chapter 17

Violet tried to focus beyond the splitting headache as she climbed up onto one of the railings, throwing one leg over to try and keep herself upright. She grabbed the thick black cable from beyond one of the coral buttresses, trying to remember she was doing this for her mum. "I'm still not talking to you," she grumbled.

Frantically yanking wires this way and that; the Doctor didn't even look up at her. He waited until he pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his mouth to give her any sort of reaction. "That's nice. You can feel free to not talk to me again for the rest of eternity. After we get out of this."

Sighing, Violet jumped to the ground with the requested cable in hand, her boots hit the grill floor with a clang and she almost lost her balance. "Believe me, I will. What am I doing with this?"

He flapped his hand, gesturing for her to give it to him immediately. Dragging it around the console, she wondered if they really could disengage the ships. It was sort of a distant thought, she was having trouble grasping on to anything, other than how she never wanted to talk to the Doctor or deal with him ever again. The problem with her mum and the ships was mostly her own fault—she could accept that. But making her say goodbye? That was all his.

Time was always in flux. That had been her first lesson. Anything 'they' knew or held dear could be rewritten in the blink of an eye. You could visit a planet today and make good friends. You could visit the planet to tomorrow and no one could remember you existed.

Too bad that seemed to be the case with everybody but the Time Lords. Time seemed stationary for them; all the possibilities were there, but the actual path snaked through them never seemed to change. Greg was lost to her.

Her nose started running and her eyes grew cloudy with tears as she ran back for the mallet and started hitting carelessly on the metal foil clasp that wasn't allowing the two cables to join.

Looking up at her, the Doctor rammed the sonic screwdriver inside the mess of wires. "Don't even think about it Vi, you can't do it. And if you try, I'll have to stop you. You've let him go, leave it at that."

Wiping her nose on the sleeve of her borrowed jumper, she turned away from him. "Yeah, well, screw you."

"I will stop you. Don't make it come to that for me." His voice was so infuriatingly calm. It made her want to just… kill him.

He probably thought she was still a stupid sixteen year old, who'd fall for his overly simplistic attempt to dump her in early twenty-first century Cardiff. She wasn't that girl any more, and he ought to give her at least SOME credit. "Who said you can stop me?"

Shaking his head, the Doctor went back to his work. "We'll discuss this later. We need more power NOW. The rest of it… right now, just doesn't matter. I'm sorry Violet, but it just doesn't."

Frowning bitterly, she began rerouting the power on the console. "Of course you wouldn't think so."

XYZ

Gwen wasn't sure as to whether she should be impressed with the eight year old before her, or if she should be slightly annoyed and afraid.

He'd grabbed his brother's face in his hands, making eye contact. The younger boy had fidgeted but Rom held him until he stopped and was calm. "Branden… we have to do this. No one else is going to help us. Got it?"

The younger boy nodded. "I'm scared."

"I know. But we'll just have to do what we can remember and hope we figure the rest out." He grinned quietly. "And if we get this all fixed up, I'm gunna throw a tantrum until the Doctor says we can stay with Uncle Jack for a month."

Manipulative little creatures weren't they? She'd also noticed they only called him UNCLE when they wanted something.

Deciding it was time to get them back on track, she stepped between them. "What do you need me to do to help?"

Rom looked at her for a moment, something familiar twinkling behind his eyes. She recognised it from Jack, when he was about to do something very foolish. "Ok. I can get it set up to accept the code to trip the system. We're still hazy on the code itself, but Branden's going to think real hard about it. Then… well, I have an idea, sorta. What I need is, like… more power. Which is kind of in short supply right now, with the TARDIS closing down systems and stuff."

Before Gwen could ask what that meant, her phone began ringing. Pulling it out of her pocket, she answered the call, wondering what else could possibly go wrong.

"Gwen," Owen breathed on the other end. "We're going to try to distract the ship. Doctor says you might lose power for a moment. It'll reboot in thirty seconds, then the kids have about twenty after that to dump the other ship before she figures out what's going on, and locks everything down, got it?"

You know, she really ought to stop with the sarcastic musings about how things could possibly not get worse, because this was them—and the situation could always find some new way to implode around them. "The kids don't have the formula to dump the level."

"Well, shit. Because this thing is charged and you have about fifteen…"

It ended up not even being that long. Before Owen could finish his thought, the call dropped and the stationary ship rocked, dropping all three of them to the floor. Outside the chamber, Rose Tyler moaned in agony.

Before Branden could rush off to his mother, she grabbed his arm as he attempted to squirm past. "Branden—Rom—that was Owen. They're trying to distract the ship. We have about half a minute before the power comes back on, then you'll have only about twenty seconds to do this." She flicked on her torch again, trying to provide some sort of illumination.

"We're all set," Rom confirmed, dragging himself off the floor in the darkness. "But we don't have the formula." He began punching buttons on the control panel, then looked back in the near-blackness to his brother. "Come on, Bran. We gotta do this."

Biting his lip, the boy nodded. "If you rerout the… the coupling… the big blue one, into the big red one, you'll have power when it starts back up."

The older boy nodded, pointing for his brother to just do it. "Good. Ok one thing solved." The other 'thing' that remained unsolved still hung in the air.

All Gwen could do was hold the light for them—the technology was beyond what she understood; it was far more alien than ay of the alien things she'd come into contact with at Torchwood. Though she supposed it was certain to be that way. Time Lords were slightly more sophisticated intellectually and technologically than your run-of-the-mill alien with inter-steller travelling capabilities that wanted to set up, say, a smuggling operation. Out of Cardiff.

Even she had to admit, her life was getting a little weird.

With another jostle that nearly sent them back onto the floor, the ship hummed back to life. Rom turned to his brother. "We need the formula—now!"

The boy looked at the keys, panic building in his eyes.

"Bran! Fifteen seconds!"

Branden moaned. It wasn't in pain, exactly—more like the anticipation of pain. "You're gunna haveta do it." The boy sighed. "Just—don't make it hurt so much this time."

Gwen wasn't even sure if she wanted to know.

XYZ


	18. Chapter 18

If the psychic wave hadn't knocked them off of their feet, the ship's protestations bashing them off of each and every wall in succession had completed the job. The Doctor may have even lost consciousness when he'd been clipped in the torso by one of the railings, causing him to flip over onto the footbridge below.

Passed out was such a dirty word. Blacked out sounded much more becoming of a Time Lord. Still—he'd been unconscious for several seconds until one of Jack's people prodded him. It took him a few moments to focus his eyes on the one in the well-tailored suit. Ianto, it was. The one that always thought he was going to snatch Jack away from them again. The one with the twisted up sense of guilt, remorse and devotion, all in one package Jack no doubt couldn't resist.

As soon as he saw only one Ianto instead of three or four, he trudged to his feet, looking for Owen Harper, who was leaning over a lump of something near the doorway leading into the rest of the ship. "She's got a pretty good knock on the head—nice assortments of cuts and bruises," the medic announced, before the Doctor could even ask what the status was.

"I'll look after her," the Doctor announced as he made his way to the lump on the floor. "Find Rose." He began rattling off directions on auto-pilot even as he gave Violet the once-over. Owen left. He might have said something, he might not have—the Doctor really hadn't been listening.

It had worked, the ship's main entrance was unlocked and the psychic overload from the ship had stopped. He knew there'd been a price. There hadn't been time to discuss it, but Violet had to have been aware of the possibilities. However, the immediacy of losing her lover had been far more pressing than the possibility of losing the TARDIS to which she was bonded.

Things were not going to be easy for her. "Violet…"

Wiping the blood from the gash on her forehead, the Doctor sighed. "Vi, I need you to wake up." Rose needed him, but he couldn't leave Violet here by herself—that could be dangerous. Swiping his thumb at the slice on her cheek, he prodded the forming bruise. There just wasn't time.

Looking up at Ianto Jones, the Doctor tried to straighten the young woman's body out just a bit, to keep anything from being injured any further by strain. "Can you stay here with her? I need to keep her in the ship."

The young man nodded. "I may be able--"

The Doctor shook his head. "We need to keep her on the ship. Lets put it this way—if she tries to leave…shoot her. Non-lethal if you can help it, but if you can't… well, then you can't, and I'll understand." Not the most brilliant or coherent sounding plan, especially with all of the protesting the Doctor had done over these years to make his opinion of guns known. But he was a bit pressed for time.

"What--"

But before Ianto Jones could ask whatever it was, the Doctor was jogging down the hall. Violet…needed looking after. At least until her anger died down and she saw reason. But he couldn't do it. There was someone who needed him a little bit more right now.

XYZ

Blinking in surprise, Toshiko began typing into the translation program again, trying to recompile the last statement. This was just… completely incomprehensible. It made no sense. The aliens had stated their intention of showing the seriousness of their cause to the 'Emperor of Earth' by blowing up their scout vessels.

There had to be a glitch with the program, but she couldn't find it. She needed to figure out what they'd really said, what they really meant… and she had to do it quickly. The energy readings coming from the ships that were already in-system.

Pecking furiously, she recompiled, then reran the last message. As her machine worked, she blinked a few times, trying to rewet her eyes, because she couldn't believe what was coming back up again. They were going to show the seriousness of their cause of invading earth by destroying their own ships.

And then…

And then the sensors lit up light Christmas as the ships exploded simultaneously on her view screens.

Huh.

Alien logic. It's not our logic.

Great—the Earth wasn't being invaded. It, however, didn't solve one little problem: Jack had never reported back. She didn't know if he'd even still been alive (Jack's resilience aside) when they'd blown, but being blown to smithereens tended to put a damper on one's ability to resurrect oneself.

They'd lost communication with him forty-five minutes ago, but at least his communicator had still been sending off a signal, meaning it as functional if out of range. Now, of course, there was nothing.

And the kid. She had no idea what the repercussions would be for the kid doing something stupid, but she had a pretty good idea Torchwood was going to be blamed for his behavior. There was just something of the situation that just smacked of that. Toshiko didn't know the Doctor well, but it was something HE would blame the stupid, inadequate humans for, and if he was blaming them for it, she was pretty sure that Rose's daughter would be lining up to hold them responsible for her lover doing something stupid. That's just how things tended to work themselves out around those parts. Toshiko not only saw it as a possibility but a highly likely outcome.

That being said… it was her duty to inform someone.

Good ole duty. Leave it to that to turn her into the instant bad guy.

XYZ

The hand wrapped around her wrist was cutting off the circulation. Violet didn't care. She just continued glaring at the man in the navy suit. Before she could raise her other hand to him, he grabbed that one as well. He was quick for a fellow that looked like he never did anything that could cause him to get the slightest speck of dust upon himself.

Her teeth ground as her jaw locked. She could kill them all, really. Letting him go up there. Why would they let him? He wasn't authorized to do anything with Torchwood in this reality. Why would he try?

Because he thought he could help. Damn him, damn his…his…helpfulness.

Even though she put up a good fight, she was still a tad on the weak side from having her brains scrambled by the TARDIS, then being knocked unconscious by her. On a better day, they'd have been more evenly matched. That was the only reason why he was able to lower both of her hands. At least, that's what she told herself.

He held on to her wrists, still, his icy blue eyes locked upon hers. "He went up there on his own. And if you're worried that he's gotten himself killed, well, we're worried he may have gotten Jack killed."

The man, Ianto, if she remembered correctly, blamed her for the communications silence just as much as she blamed him. Good. Misery loved company.

Finally, instead of fighting him, she let her hands go slack as she drew in a few deep calming breaths. "Yeah, well, Jack's immortal. I'm more worried about him getting GREG killed."

Slowly, Ianto loosened his grip on her wrists. "I still promised I wouldn't let you leave the ship."

Closing her eyes, Violet leaned against the wall, trying to feel him. It had been so easy before she'd been forced to re-erect her barriers. Now, no matter how hard she tried…nothing. So very much nothing. "He's all I have," she whispered.

"Now you know how I feel about Jack."

She almost left it at that. For just a moment or two, she was content to let them wallow in their shared misery together, after Toshiko had relayed the news regarding the blown-up ships.

But then, from somewhere within the bowels of the ship, her mother's agonized cries rang out. Ianto looked toward the hall leading into the rest of the ship, and without even thinking, Violet pushed into his shoulder and flew past him, running for the door.

She didn't know what she'd do out there, but there had to be something. Her mother was in better hands than her own and she didn't think she could bare to look her mother in the eye right now, with how she was feeling.

XYZ

Rom rubbed his forehead with a dirty, sweaty palm as he crawled toward the torch still lulling back and forth on the plated floor. That had been tough and he hoped he never had to do it ever again. It was bad enough the ship had been trying to make his head pop, but then going into Branden's head…

Branden. His brother was moaning a few feet away. Well, it had started as a moan, then had turned into a whimpering, then full-blown sobs. He hoped his brother knew he wouldn't have done that if there had been another way. They'd had to do it like that, with Rom funneling his knowledge of the language and the control panel directly into his brother's brain. He just…hadn't learned how to do it without overloading the nervous system with his own excess impulses.

It made him feel just awful and sick inside. "Bran?" he whispered, shining the light on his brother. Branden was curled in the foetal position at the base of the long metal panel, hugging himself. Rom suddenly understood that sticky, humid sense of self-loathing that sometimes radiated the Doctor when he wasn't shielding his mind properly, and he was upset about something; Rom had something similar churning in his chest.

Flashing the light behind him, toward the other noise in the antechamber, he saw Gwen Cooper (who wasn't such a party pooper—she had helped keep them on track, and had somehow managed to hold onto that lever with the entire ship trying to shake them off like in one of those car chases with the guy hanging on the roof in those movies he wasn't allowed to watch, since they made him hyper, so mum said) flipping her hair out of her face. There were streaks down her cheeks, and he couldn't tell if it was sweat or tears, or worse yet, blood. But other than being shaken (not stirred! Heh. He loved those movies) she seemed ok.

It was then that Rom realised his own hands were a little shaky. Oh well. He'd live. "You ok?" he asked her, even as he started crawling toward his brother. He could feel his mum's overwhelming distress, and even his baby brother's howling discomfort and fear, but it was Branden's mind that pressed against his own like something hard and pointy.

Letting out a few deep breaths, Gwen got to her knees. "Think so. But I'll be seeing stars for days."

Yeah. He'd heard her head bash off one of the walls before the ship stopped shaking. As it was, his own thick hide was going to be pretty bruised; he'd caught his tummy on the edge of the control panel, hard. He loved the TARDIS, and he respected her, and he knew she had been very lonely and stuff lately, but he was so completely mad at her right now, and he wasn't talking to her for at least a week. Maybe even ten days.

She nodded to the huddled mass crying on the floor. "He ok?"

Putting an arm around his brother, he tried to shake the boy out of it gently "Branden. Hey. You know I'm sorry, right?" He hugged his little buddy and best playmate, rocking them both in time with the erupting sobs. When it didn't slow, he looked up at Gwen Cooper. "Can you see about mum? She's…its…" not good.

But somehow, for some reason, he couldn't say it. Because his mother's mortality frightened him. Her last encounter with the Time Vortex had slowed her aging, but it hadn't made her impervious like Uncle Jack. Rom would have even been happy with some extra fast healing, like Time Lords had, or maybe a freebie regeneration or two. It made him worry about his mum in a way that was tough for him to think about.

Nodding, Gwen left him to his brother. She was a smart lady. She knew when to just let them go and when to help. He'd just mentally beaten his four year old brother with a stick, there weren't many words of comfort that the lady could offer. "Bran," he whispered again, tears catching in his eyelashes. "I'm sorry, Branden." But he was eight, and that was old enough to know that saying you were sorry couldn't always fix everything, even if it was a good start.

XYZ

Jack's fist connected with the young man's jaw. Again. There was something good and righteous about a royal shit-kicking now and again. Mostly he was annoyed that the kid's sweet talking had worked. "THAT is for getting them to blow themselves up, and not even telling me the plan."

Stumbling backward, Greg's back hit the brick wall on the other side of the narrow alley they'd transmatted to just as the ship was torn apart by a matter destabilization chain reaction. He wiped his lip where he'd bit the inside of it, looking at the blood on the back of his hand. "Yeah, well, you never gave me the chance!"

Before he could tell the stupid kid exactly what he thought of that shitty (if effective) plan, he stopped in his tracks. Violet was standing at the end of the alley, looking as if she'd seen a ghost. "Oh look," Jack started sarcastically, even though he wasn't feeling it any more. "Your girlfriend's here to save you."

The look of pained distain that the young woman shot him was enough to let him know that there was far more going on than he knew about, and he'd better just take a step back. He knew it couldn't be good when she walked toward Greg at an uneven pace, like she wanted desperately to run to him, but for some reason didn't dare. "You scared me," she breathed, wrapping her arms around his neck.

The young man squeezed her back, kissing her cheek. For some reason it made Jack feel like an intruder, just that one tiny gesture. "No worries. I had a plan."

Closing her eyes, she pulled away from him just a bit. "We lost our TARDIS. FRED's gone."

He frowned. "What does that mean?"

She sniffed. "He's out in the Vortex somewhere. Don't know how to find him." Putting her head on his shoulder, she began undignified and rutted sobs.

Now, Jack had no idea what had happened while he was gone, but she wasn't crying over the loss of the ship. That was a difficult thing, but even he could think up a few ways to keep the situation fro being permanent. She was crying like she'd lost something or someone else.

That was the thing that made Jack quietly creep out of the alley, watching Greg comfort the grieving woman. He needed to get back to Torchwood.

Next…Epilogue

Epilogue…

It had been three days before Violet could bring herself to go back to the hub. The worst part was, she didn't have her sonic screwdriver (which she still maintained as her own, by virtue of the statute of limitations on theft having run out), so she couldn't activate the 'invisible' lift from the outside. She had to go through the gift shop maintained by Ianto Jones. It was bad enough she had to apologise (it was the right thing to do after her rude behavior) but she had to request admittance to the Hub.

It was quiet in there. Gwen Cooper was entertaining the two boys by teaching them a card game in the conference room. Rom was shifting back and forth, licking his lip in concentration. Branden seemed sullen in his stillness. She got a vibe off of him that he really just wanted everyone to keep their distance for now.

Other than waving to them, she didn't make any other gestures to interfere with their gaming. They looked like two little kids in need of some childish distraction. She knew what it was like to have a childhood interrupted by very grown-up things.

Toshiko was at her workstation tearing apart a coiled device that looked like a temporal lock disruptor. No wonder the TARDIS had tried to shake them loose, if they'd been using that on her. She offered a tight smile to Violet and Greg as they walked hand-in-hand across a narrow footbridge.

Jack was nowhere to be seen. Owen Harper was also at his workstation and regarded her with about the same amount of warmth as a glacier. She supposed that she deserved that, too. She hadn't exactly played nice with Captain Jack's friends, had she?

When she made her way into the lowest basement, where the TARDIS had landed, she was surprised to see the door slightly ajar. Having the door unlocked was something that could get you a good scolding from the Doctor, much less having it cracked open. Cardinal Time Lord sin, the way you heard him tell of it.

But when Greg closed the door behind them, it didn't latch shut. They'd definitely used the device on the lock. Not only had it destroyed the lock and compromised the security of the ship, but it looked like it had disrupted some other systems. The console was glowing more of a pale sickly yellow than its usual vibrant green and a lot of the lights seemed to be out as they walked through the ship.

"Looks like they have their own problems to worry about," Greg whispered as he squeezed her hand.

He was doing it again. Taking care of her, making sure she did the right thing in apologising for her behavior and making things right with everyone, and trying to comfort her while doing so. She wished he wasn't so damned… good.

Sure, he was infuriating. He did things sometimes (like running off to play hero and nearly getting himself and Jack killed) when she didn't know how she could possibly be in the same room with him any longer. But he also… was just so good. The other, better half of her. She'd tried to show him that over the last few days, but it seemed like physical intimacy was shallow compared to how close she wanted to be to him. There'd never been a time when she'd actually wanted his children, until now. If it was the only way to have a part of him with her…

"What?"

It was then that she noticed her eyes were watering. "Nothing. Just… not looking forward to this."

He poked her in the back as they made their way toward the scraping at the other end of the level, near some of the better ship's quarts. "I don't know what happened between you two, but you have to at least say you're sorry. Whether you mean it or not." When she opened her mouth to protest, he poked her again. "Just do it."

There was a light coming from an unfamiliar room. As she approached, she wondered how he dared act so wise, when he was just as much of a screw-up and a mess as she was, just in a totally different way. Before she could make a snide remark to that effect, she peared through the doorway and stopped dead in her tracks.

Her mum was sleeping in an oversized bed. The blankets pulled up to her chin were a sandy tan knit, and her pale face disappeared into the equally dull pillowcase under her head. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her lips were chapped and white.

She'd wanted to just slap the Doctor earlier, whenever she thought of how her mother had not aged since she'd seen her last, but he'd been telling her to let Greg go. Her mother wasn't as immortal as she'd feared. Somehow that didn't fill her with any sort of joy, the way she thought it might.

Next to the bed was a small wicker cot. Very dated, but somehow fitting in the room done in earth tones and wood. Practically tiptoeing toward it, she looked inside. Arten Lodi Prime Tyler lay inside, swaddled and sleeping, his itty bitty old-man face scrunched in concentration, as if unconsciousness was a feat achieved only by a certain few. "I am SO sorry for what mum named you," she whispered, brushing her finger against the little boy's cheek. "If it makes you feel better, I'll call you Buckwheat Bogbean Tyler when no one else is around. Plants are way better than planets."

Greg nudged Violet, and she looked over at her mother, who was watching them with an exhausted smile on her face. "Barcelona Minor Tyler," she teased.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she took her mother's hand. It was cold and Violet didn't like the feel of it. Not at all the soft warm touch she remembered from her own childhood. "You ok?"

Nuzzling her cheek against the pillow, her mum closed her eyes. "Yeah. I'll live. He's ok too. More ok than me, even."

"Take care of yourself," Violet whispered, brushing a hair away from her mother's forehead. She didn't like being in this reversed role. "You're the only mum I've got."

Her mother squeezed her hand back. "Not getting rid of me so easily. Just…had a tough time with that one."

That was a bit of an understatement.

"Let your mother sleep."

Rolling her eyes, Violet tried to swallow back the larger part of her distain for the Doctor. "I just wanted to make sure she was ok."

Greg had been fussing quietly over the cradle. He stood up straight then, like he always did when the Doctor was around. He always acted like the Doctor was some…respectable figure or something, doing everything just shy of saluting. It had been cute when she was a teenager. Now… well, she just wondered if Greg had ever gotten over his hero-worship of the Doctor.

He wasn't always right, Greg should know. Nor did the sun rise and set beneath his feet. Two tough lessons she'd learned within the last few days.

Kissing her mother's cheek, she got up from the bed as gently as possible. "He's a cute kid. Unfortunate name, though." Her mother hadn't done anything yet to shake the faith Violet had placed in the woman—Rose Tyler was still a legend. The bravest, the best, the cleverest, the most caring person Violet had ever known…and her mum. Was it even right to have such a perfect relationship with her mother? Well, except for that one thing. Rose Tyler enjoyed tormenting her offspring. Well, she supposed everybody needed something. "Make sure Branden doesn't try to play with him like a Cabbage Patch Doll. He kinda looks like one."

The Doctor didn't say anything else, he simply stood in the doorway, making things so very uncomfortable.

She could also feel Greg's eyes upon her, urging her on. Taking one last peek in the cot, she bit her lower lip. "Sorry for being rude," she mumbled, trying to speed over the words she really didn't mean.

"What I told you before still stands. Don't make me do it."

Somehow, when the Doctor said that, he managed to not look at Greg. Violet hadn't managed to maintain the same level of composure. She stole a quick glance, but she looked away again before their eyes could lock. "Yeah. About that… well, my options are a little limited. Since I don't have a ship or anything any more." She'd lost her home, somewhere in all of this, and she was about to lose the person who made it home.

The Doctor wiped his hands on his trousers, then looked at the grease stains on his fingers. It was all some effort to look care-free, but she knew how stiff and strained this coversation was for him too. "It's out in the Vortex somewhere. We'll find it eventually. If not… well, I just came up from the new storage level that's suddenly appeared. There're six tiny TARDISes down there that are about to make their first room. In a couple hundred years you can fly a whole new type. What would a cross between a forty and a one-oh-nine be? Mean, average or sum, do you think?"

And that pathetic attempt at humour fell entirely flat. The Doctor continued to examine his fingers, Violet wondered at boot, and if it was a trick of the lighting, or if there was a hole in the leather along the edge of the zip. Greg ran his thumb repeatedly against a piece of the wicker, and her mum was blissfully unconscious to the whole awkward thing.

"I know she's probably not flight-worthy right now, but when she is, I was wondering if we could get a lift to another time zone."

One eyebrow arched as the Doctor inspected her, seeming to be judging her motives. "Anywhere in particular?"

Violet looked to Greg, who rose a hand in an awkward wave. She sighed, wondering just how clunky and painful this conversation could get. "We want to settle up with Greg's family. Maybe stay with them for a little bit. Being Earth-bound again can't be that bad, granted I stay away from any and all incarnations of Torchwood."

The Doctor nodded. "Shouldn't be too long until I have her functional. Your old room's now filled with dinosaurs and trains, but Greg's room is still there, if you want it till then. I'm sure your mother would like to have you around."

Oh wasn't it just so like him, to try and use her mother as leverage. "You said she needs her sleep. I'll give you the address of the place where we've been staying if you need anything. Otherwise we'll swing around to see her and the boys when she's up for it." Mum and her brothers…not him. "I guess we'll be going."

Walking past the Doctor, she marched down the corridor on a mission—to get as far away from him as possible. She didn't check to see if Greg was with her, she was that animate about it. Maybe when her mum was feeling better, they could talk about it.

No—she knew what her mother would say. Her mother would take the Doctor's side. Because letting Time run its course was the 'right' thing to do.

But dammit! She spent just about every spare moment fixing errant time strands and repairing time lines. She'd lost a childhood with her mother, the one person who'd understood her when she was young, in order to prepare for this vocation that had been thrust upon her. She'd lost her home and belonged nowhere because of this calling she'd foolishly answered. The universe owed her.

It owed her just one. And if she could figure out the point where the time lines intersected and then diverged, she could stop it. If she was clever, she could do it without the reapers seeing. Without the Doctor seeing.

And if they ended up at odds?

Well… she was tired of caring. It was too tedious to worry about his opinon of her, in a world where she had the power to fix things. She fixed them for others…why not herself?

Just this once, the universe owed her. Just this once, Violet was going to collect.

THE END.


End file.
